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Medical Misinformation: Vet the Message!

Undoubtedly, the majority of cardiologists have had numerous conversations just like this, urging a patient to take a statin, a powerful cholesterol-lowering drug with robust mortality benefit. Part of the reason these oftentimes “no brainer” recommendations are rejected derives from widely disseminated incorrect information which vastly overstates the risks of these drugs. (Of course, like anything in life, statin use is not entirely risk free; statin treatment should always entail a thoughtful analysis of risks versus benefits). Most patients do not recognize that the benefits of statin use are invisible (“I didn’t have a heart attack or stroke this past year”), whereas the small and typically reversible risks (e.g., muscle pain) are readily apparent. Many patients who would benefit from statin use do not take them. Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer of both men and women around the world. Robust scientific advances, published in the pages of our journals (the Editors-inChief are listed in the Appendix), have fostered significant improvements that benefit individuals and society. Yet, cardiovascular disease continues to transform itself, emerging in new forms, such as heart failure. The struggle has shifted to new battlefields. These successes derive from an armamentarium of powerful tools, medicines, devices, and awareness of lifestyle-related hazards, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and smoking. Sadly, however, we do not take full advantage of the tools at our disposal. One significant cause of suboptimal utilization of our prodigious tool chest is medical misinformation hyped through the internet, television, chat rooms, and social media. In many instances, celebrities, activists, and politicians convey false information; not uncommonly, authors with purely venal motives participate. We can point to numerous other examples, including the entirely unfounded concerns regarding vaccinations. The notion that MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination causes autism was based on a single, flawed study, long since refuted, and its publication retracted. Seventeen much larger and properly controlled studies have proven otherwise. Nevertheless, the internet shouts un-