2020 vision? A retrospective study of time-bound curative claims in British and Irish newspapers

[摘要] All letters are subject to editing and may be shortened. General letters can be sent to bjgpdisc{at}rcgp.org.uk (please include your postal address for publication), and letters responding directly to BJGP articles can be submitted online via eLetters. We regret we cannot notify authors regarding publication.For submission instructions visit: bjgp.org/lettersThere is a long history of the media enthusiastically reporting on treatments or ‘cures’ for diseases,1–9 including during the COVID-19 pandemic.10–12 It is uncertain, however, how accurate these projections are. We therefore interrogated the last 20 years of British media claims for future cures of diseases for their accuracy.We searched two large databases for all news stories in UK and Irish newspapers, published between January 2000 and December 2020 containing the term ‘claim’ (or variations thereof) and ‘by 2020’, and determined if the claims had indeed been met.Among 46 articles, we found a total of 56 claims for new treatments or cures that would be realised in some form by the year 2020. Box 1 gives examples. In 27 articles, the word ‘cure’ appeared in the title. Most (86%) claims appeared in national newspapers. Two-thirds of the claims appeared to originate from clinicians and/or medical researchers. These usually occurred in the context of a recent scientific publication, but also included editorials written by clinicians. Just over half of all claims were ‘definitive’ (for example, ‘a new “super drug” to cure diabetes and obesity … will be available for patients by 2020’). Thirty-three per cent of claims related to cancer, 13% to genetics, 11% to dementia, and the remainder to infectious diseases, liver disease, hangovers, asthma, hearing loss, and other conditions. Only 7 (13%) of claims were fully or partially met by the end of 2020 (see Supplementary Material for full details of methodology and results).‘… there are drug companies that think they have a cure for dementia by 2020.’ (Direct quote from politician, July 2013) — not met‘NEW HOPE FOR CANCER CURE […] The three-year research has been tested on mice, but [clinician-scientist] expects it to be tested on humans and developed as a treatment by 2020.’ (Article text reporting on publication of mouse trials of CAR T-cell therapy, August 2013) — met‘Asthma could be cured within five years … “… in five years we could be in a position to treat patients”’ (Article text, then direct quote from researcher [we tested the latter claim] about publication of paper on calcilytics in a cellular asthma model, April 2015) — not met‘One-off treatment promises to “cure” men of erectile dysfunction’ […] ‘a treatment could be widely available within three years’.

[学科分类] 卫生学