On Thu, 20 Oct 1994, james eric graham wrote:
> > Clearly someone is playing chicken little here.....
>> It's called "preventative medicine".
Inflating the incidence of an organism (Newsweek said that 40% of
enterococci were VRE) is not preventive medicine, it is sensationalism.
You will get no argument from me about overuse of antibiotics, or about
the potential risk of MDR's, however, when we begin playing the
exageration game to get the response we think we need, using
rationalizations like "we can use any publicity we get", we are starting
down a road that does not end in science or medicine.
> As with HIV, the problem is
HIV, I would argue, is an example of this problem. The CDC has
been cycling back its predictions on HIV cases for years now, down to 1/3
of original estimates. As more than one epidemiologist admitted, their
concern for the potential danger created, or allowed the creation of
inflated and overly alarmist predictions of the virus's spread. Now a
backlash is growing, as the public, feeling it has been had, has lost
some confidence in the integrity of the scientific and medical community.
HIV has become "politicized" to the point where a NY health official had
his house firebombed for lowering HIV infection numbers....
I believe the public is capable of assessing risks, when the numbers are
correctly reported. Even if they cannot, I believe that inflating numbers or
overstating risk will do more harm than good.
Bob Morrell
