Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7918

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

Hailemeskel B, Gavgani MZ.
Assessment of accuracy and completeness of the prescription drug information on the Internet
ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting 2000 Dec; 35:

Abstract:

Numerous studies evaluate the quality and accuracy of the health related information provided through the Internet. Despite the uniformity of the goal, each one of the studies has followed a different path and has used a different methodology. Some have looked at the information regarding a particular disease state while some others have looked at the information related to a particular medication. This project is an attempt to evaluate information related to some of the Web Pages that provide information about a randomly selected prescription drug from each of the following 5 categories: Hypertension (amlodipine (Norvasc)), Diabetes (insulin), Arthritis (celecoxib (Celebrex)), Asthma (albuterol (Proventil/Ventoline)), and Hyperlipidemia (simvastatin (Zocor)). Several sites will be chosen from the web pages related to each drug. The selection will be based on the type of the organization that has created these web sites. The criteria for inclusion of the web pages include government agencies, pharmaceutical industries, news agencies, academic institutions (universities), and online pharmacies. Each web page will be evaluated for its accuracy and content of the information. The evaluation criteria will include: indications for use, side effects, contraindications, mechanism of action, use in pregnancy, pharmacokinetics, dosage forms, usual doses, allergies, and drug interactions. The package insert on each individual drug will be used as a standard reference to evaluate the accuracy and the content of each web page. A point system will be developed for each category of information that presents or is missing. Descriptive statistical analysis will be used to analyze the data.

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909