JAMA Issues Cautions About Internet Health Information
by Peter Barry Chowka From Natural Healthline |
"Information on the Internet is subject to the same rules and regulations as conversation at a bar," George D. Lundberg, MD, JAMA's editor, told the Associated Press on April 13. "It may be very valid; it may be utter trash. The Internet is the world's largest vanity press."
The primary issue about health information online for Dr. Dave Jenkinson of the University of Pittsburgh is "'Who's putting it on?' If someone is coming up with a position, do they have the research to back it up, and is the research credible?"
Sports medicine clinics and professional organizations can be good sources of information online, Jenkinson told the AP, which explained his position as, "They are more likely to rely on research to back their positions, and their material may well bear the names of well-known authorities."
Meanwhile, the federal government, an increasingly active presence on the Net, is organizing its own Web-based material to make it easier to search, according to Mary Jo Deering, director of health communications and telehealth for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. www.healthfinder.gov is scheduled to be launched April 15, and will offer links to more than 800 consumer health Web sites including more than 300 federal sites.
Jenkinson said that commercial Web sites may offer good material, and he cited a Gatorade site (www.gssiweb.com) as an example. According to the AP "he was generally leery of sites touting food supplements, calling them 'the biggest areas of hokum [online] right now.'"
Jenkinson also criticized hypertext links, even those on what he considers "good" Web sites, which "may get you blasted off to a different site" and into questionable material, in his view.
For more information,
JAMA (free access but requires registration)
http://www.ama-assn.org/public/journals/jama/jamahome.htm
Federal Government's Health Finder:
http://www.healthfinder.gov
Acupuncture.com |