Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1304

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Cure For The Common Cold
British Medical Journal 2003 Jun 21

Full text:

Clinical trials showed that ViroPharma’s anti-cold drug, pleconaril, was little better than a placebo in clinical trials, but that didn’t stop hundreds of newspapers from hyping it as a miracle cure. “It fell far short of what any rational person would call a cure,” observes Gary Schwitzer. “Yet hundreds of journalists called pleconaril just that – and more – in hundreds of news stories before the drug was ever submitted to the FDA for approval.
… Journalists used an array of superlative terms for the drug -cure, miracle, wonder drug, super drug, a medical first. It was described as ‘good news for physicians and their patients,’ ‘potentially huge,’ and as a treatment that ‘may drastically help relieve your misery.’ It was compared with the search for the Holy Grail and with man’s landing on the moon.”