Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18301

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: Journal Article

Kmietowicz Z
Doctors call for end to misleading advertising about private screening
BMJ 2010 Jun 24; 340:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/340/jun24_2/c3394

Abstract:

Private companies that market health screening tests to the general public need to be better regulated to prevent people being exploited and the NHS being burdened with patients having unnecessary tests and procedures, the BMA and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges have said.

A letter sent to England’s health secretary, Andrew Lansley, by Hamish Meldrum, the BMA’s chairman, and Neil Douglas, chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, says that safeguards do exist to ensure that NHS screening programmes are evidence based and that patients are aware of the risks, limitations, and potential benefits of tests. But such measures are often missing from private sector screening tests, making it “impossible for people to distinguish between private testing services that may do some good and those that are of no value or even potentially harmful,” they write.

Many screening tests offered by private companies are “unreliable and inaccurate” and . . .