March 18, 2009 – 10:32 am
With so much media, research and professional focus upon the ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession, pharma’s wooing of other health professions is often overlooked. It’s a timely issue, given the push by other professions to expand their influence over medication prescribing and patients’ medication choices.
Here is how it works, according to [...]
March 13, 2009 – 10:55 am
This spoof of the pharma industry and the medicalisation of daily life is promoting a new drug, Despondex, as a “huge step forward in the battle against exhuberance”.
March 12, 2009 – 10:46 am
Alice Springs physician Dr Rob Roseby has commented on the Inside Story article:
“You describe elements of institutional racism, but as an industry the media is not alone in this respect.
No matter how well meaning, Governments, healthcare institutions, researchers, schools etc have all in the past and probably still do stuff up what we do around [...]
March 12, 2009 – 10:37 am
Continuing on from earlier posts, here are some more suggestions re stories in Aboriginal health that deserve reporting.
Anthropologist Tess Lea, the Director of the School for Social and Policy Research at Charles Darwin University and author of a recent book on the culture of public health, Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts: Indigenous Health in northern Australia [...]
March 12, 2009 – 10:27 am
Dr Alex Wodak from St. Vincent’s Hospital Sydney writes:
Apart from the alcohol beverage industry, most people in Australia need little convincing that our favourite drug causes us a lot of trouble. Each year alcohol causes thousands of deaths, fills many hospital beds, results in many alcohol-fuelled violent rampages and cost our economy many billions of [...]
More food for thought on the issue of how the media covers Aboriginal health and related issues…Kerry Klimm, director of kinnected – an Indigenous media/communication consultancy, has written about the centrality of relationships to improving this coverage:
“I am an Aboriginal woman who has worked as a journalist in mainstream and Indigenous media for 10 years. [...]
Following on from earlier posts about this Inside Story article on media reporting of Aboriginal health, here are some reflections from Miranda Harman, lecturer in journalism at the University of Tasmania (and previously a senior editor at the SMH):
“There’s an entrenched bias in the news industry towards bad news, which has probably grown out of [...]
Gavin Mooney wrote in Crikey today about the frustrations of trying to get some useful answers to his questions about the merits, or otherwise, of PSA screening for prostate cancer.
Thanks heavens for the internet; in cyberspace you don’t have to rely on finding a doctor who’s up to date with the latest evidence and with [...]
Dr Jon Hunt commented on a recent post that asked for suggestions for news stories in Aboriginal health. He suggested the Anangu Bibi birthing project would be worth a story. Croakey asked him to elaborate:
“It was based in Port Augusta and Whyalla which are two medium sized towns in South Australia which have a high [...]
Following on from previous posts, Professor Kerin O’Dea, director of the Sansom Institute at the University of SA, has some more story tips:
• We need much more sophisticated analysis of the state of Aboriginal health. At present it’s often reported as if the issues are the same for all Indigenous Australians. But some Aboriginal groups [...]
