NEWS: Journalism critique blog calls Chicago Tribune "off balance" on Lyme
The Knight Science Journalism Tracker is a blog for science reporters. Affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it critiques science reporting with the stated goal of helping science journalists improve their own performance. It looks at the Chicago Tribune's recent article about Lyme disease, which among other things, dismisses chronic Lyme as "non-existent." The blog takes the Tribune to task for not reporting the evidence, pro and con, and for not giving both sides equal time to speak.
From the Knight Science Journalism Tracker
By Paul Raeburn, Dec. 16, 2010
Chicago Tribune off balance on chronic Lyme disease
This is what happens when reporters make up their minds about a controversial story before beginning to write. In a Dec. 8 Chicago Tribune piece on Lyme disease, reporters Patricia Callahan and Trine Tsouderos write that while Lyme disease is real, so-called “chronic” Lyme disease, said to last for years, “is an illness that might not even exist.”
That’s an arguable point, and a fair conclusion to come to–if the writers came to it fairly. But they follow that by saying, without attribution, that we live “in a golden age of dubious medicine,” and that “advocates can raise big money to ‘Unmask A Cure’ for a disease that already has a cure, and doctors disciplined by medical boards are held up as heroes.”
Then this:
Fueled by suspicion of doctors and drug companies, Americans are flocking to alternative healers promoting risky treatments and unproven cures. The Internet connects pseudoscientists with the desperately ill, trumpets I’ve-been-cured testimonials and often dismisses the results of clinical trials as the work of unsympathetic doctors corrupted by Big Pharma money.
Google “ALS” and “treatment” and results include a site touting deer antler therapy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Google “cancer” and “alternative treatments” and you’ll find a “grape cure,” among others. Message boards are packed with patients trading treatments, often including detailed prescription information.
It goes on. Note that none of this is attributed. The reporters are saying, in their own voice, that chronic Lyme disease belongs squarely with all kinds of risky and unproven cures for cancer and other ailments. With that kind of opening, most readers don’t have to wade any further through the reporting to know what conclusions the story is going to come to. The writers have conveyed their sneering skepticism without, so far, more than a few shreds of reporting. And none from anybody we might consider an expert on the disease.
Click here to read the rest of the article.
We just received this article here today in Orlando, FL and I am pissed. I sent an email to one of the reporters named Trine Tsouderos giving her a piece of my mind. I'd be happy to share it with anyone who wants to read it. I told her how she failed to report the facts and that it was one sided. Also I pointed out what she had left out. It's scary to think how many people will read this and come to the same conclusion. I am living proof that late stage, chronic Lyme disease exists and how long term IV and oral antibiotics work. I wish Under Our Skin or Turn the Corner Foundation had enough donations to provide every newspaper with their documentary. I hope all Lyme sufferers do the same by complaining to the reporters and/or their supervisers.
The article nominally attributed to Ms. Tsouderos contained two much information for a former food editor at the Chicago Tribune. It was derisive, scornful and righteously indignant all at the same time. What fools are these “Lyme doctors” who would question the high priests of Medical Science?
This article was the conceptual child of an insider in the Lyme controversy. It was too bitter for a reporter. Who was really behind it?
The Chicago Tribune is a newspaper in decline. The full-page advertisers get special attention and are able to get articles published. Call them infomercials. There is no attribution or references. The deep sources hide behind journalistic confidentiality.
Some doctors on the East Coast had dreamed of becoming multimillionaires from patents on portions of the Borrelia (Lyme disease) bacteria. Those dreams crashed in the debacle of the Lyme vaccine. The vaccine was supposed to become a billion-dollar cash cow. Tragic complications of Lyme vaccine including paralysis and death destroyed that dream.
Let us not focus on the trashy Lyme article. It does not matter who really wrote it. In its perverse way it also brings definition and focus. Bad examples also teach.
Borrelia does cause chronic disease. Its close cousins, Syphilis and Helicobacter are already famous for it. Lyme is a complex disease that provides subtle clues easily missed by prescription pad scientists interested in quick patient turnaround.
Progress in science occurs with intuitive and inspired leaps of the human mind. Double-blind placebo-controlled studies (DBCCS) are the expensive playground of the pharmaceutical giants. Einstein and Ehrlich never ran them. Doctors in their training are told that the DBCCS is the “gold standard”.
The English philosopher Isiaih Berlin classified thinkers as foxes or hedgehogs. The hedgehogs worked tirelessly on a small patch while the foxes leap readily to new ground. Yes we value our hedgehogs but let us not put them in charge.
Lyme is a pattern recognition disease. Huge amounts of data are created by the health care system but never analyzed. A DBCCS with less than one hundred patients is not superior to the analytical skills of dedicated and insightful clinicians who are able to filter large amounts of data.
Douglas R. Finlayson MD, too bad there aren't more of you.