Sensationalist medical reporting

Your comments in the editorial on medicine and the media have been timely.

Newspaper reports on medical issues are usually lopsided. They often give the impression that they have been planted by doctors to advance personal interests, with the help of friendly media people. It is rare to read well-researched medical information in the public interest.

The recent media hype over a new method of treating patients of ischaemic heart disease with percutaneous laser myocardial revascularisation (PMR) was one such example. Eminent city doctors made claims and counter-claims as if they had invented the idea or the laser machine. In addition the modalitv is still at the investigational stage in the US and Europe. It would have been appropriate if news reporters had studied the subject and taken into consideration the status of this therapeutic modality worldwide today.

We have been distressed at the manner in which medicine has been commercialised in recent times, and the nexus that has developed between doctors and the instrumentation industry. It is therefore a matter of great concern that an investigational tool like PMR is not only brought into the country without any control, and used on patients, but also that these patients pay for this treatment. The media is in a hurry to make sensational copy and advertises the treatment modality as if it has been proved to be the best option.

It is time that such uncontrolled use of technology is regulated by the Medical Council of India, and the government institutes a department for the appraisal of technological advances and their use in the country.