14 juin, 2005 10:01
Consumer Watch | Top-rated sites for medical info
By Jeff Gelles
Inquirer Columnist
Search the word arthritis on Google, and one of the first sites you'll find is http://www.arthritis.com/, with a home page that promises "answers you can trust."
But can you? Not if you expect arthritis.com to cover all the bases.
The site provides solid information about arthritis, and links to more resources. But it's silent on the latest controversy in arthritis treatment: evidence that three widely advertised drugs - all touted as safer than older medications - may expose patients to increased cardiovascular risks.
Look at who's behind arthritis.com, and you might begin to wonder why. The site is run by Pfizer, which makes Bextra, one of two of those drugs that were recently pulled from the market.
Pfizer doesn't hide its role in arthritis.com. Click on its logo, and you'll be sent to the company's home page (http://www.pfizer.com/), where you'll find information on Bextra and a link to the Food and Drug Administration's new warnings about all drugs in its class.
But to Consumers Union's Joel Gurin, the site illustrates a serious problem: We have oceans of information on the Internet. But it's hard to know whom and what you can trust.
Pfizer's arthritis.com site isn't the only site Gurin singles out. Nor does it necessarily have unusual flaws - at least for a drugmaker's site.
"The information that's on there is good," Gurin says. "It's just a question of what's missing."
A similar site - http://www.depression.com/, run by GlaxoSmithKline - describes the risks of two Glaxo antidepressants, but doesn't mention alternatives. "If you looked at this site, you would think there are only two drugs for depression," Gurin says.
It's obvious why a drugmaker would take that approach (neither Pfizer nor Glaxo returned my requests for comment), and it's equally plain why they'd want Web sites that pop up early in Internet searches.
But the good news is that there are much better alternatives - and that there's new help in finding them.
Last week, Consumers Union and another nonprofit, the Health Improvement Institute, released rankings of the 20 health-information sites that draw the most traffic on the Web.
Though 18 are commercial sites that accept advertising, only one, Pfizer.com, is run by a pharmaceutical company. And Gurin says almost all the sites, including Pfizer's, do a decent job of disclosing their ties and labeling commercial content.
Six sites drew a rating of "excellent," in part because they included unbiased, peer-reviewed articles written by health professionals, according to Consumer Health WebWatch, the name given to the joint venture. (For details, go to http://www.healthratings.org/.)
Among the top-rated sites, two that are nonprofit and advertising-free are a great place to start any search for reliable health information.
One is the outstanding Web site of the National Institutes of Health (http://www.nih.gov/). The other is KidsHealth (http://www.kidshealth.org/), a creation of the Nemours Foundation's Center for Children's Health Media.
Consumer Health WebWatch calls the NIH site nearly flawless, although it gently urges more frequent updates and citations to journal articles, as well as more critical pieces on alternative or "complementary" medicine.
It faults KidsHealth for lacking a policy for correcting false or misleading information, and for not saying how frequently it offers updates. But it praises its "wealth of content," "user-friendly" design, and "easy-to-read articles" - just what a bleary-eyed parent needs at 2 a.m. while weighing whether to give a baby Tylenol or make an emergency call to the pediatrician.
WebMD Corp., of Elmwood Park, N.J., owns two of the other top sites: WebMD Health and MedScape. Rounding out the "excellent" tier are MayoClinic.com, a commercial site despite its foundation ownership, and MedicineNet.com.
At the other end of the spectrum was QualityHealth.com, the only top-20 site rated below "good."
Consumer Health WebWatch gave it a "fair" rating, criticizing it in particular for failing to disclose that some content or surveys are sponsored by advertisers, for lacking a policy on correcting false or misleading information, and for not indicating when pages were last updated, or how often they will be.
Keeping Web pages current is a problem for many of the sites that round out this list, Gurin says. Nor is it just a problem of commercial sites - even the FDA posts health information on pages last updated in the 1990s.
But failing to keep information up to date is a crucial shortcoming on sites such as these. So is making it hard to correct errors. For better or worse, people are using the Web to guide critical choices in their lives.
"The difference between good and bad medical information can literally be a life-and-death issue," Gurin says.
Sometimes, just being good is good enough. Not this time. This is a case where excellence really matters.
Contact columnist Jeff Gelles at consumerwatch@phillynews.com or 215-854-4558. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/jeffgelles. Read his blog, "Consumer Inq," at http://www.consumerwatch.blogspot.com/.
Health Site Ratings
How Consumer Health WebWatch rates 20 leading health-information Web sites.
Excellent
http://www.kidshealth.com/
http://www.mayoclinic.com/
http://www.medicinenet.com/
http://www.medscape.com/
http://www.nih.gov/
http://www.webmd.com/
Very Good
http://www.healthology.com/
http://www.emedicine.com/
http://www.healthsquare.com/
http://www.intelihealth.com/
http://www.realage.com/
Good
http://www.rxlist.com/
http://www.pfizer.com/
http://www.drugs.com/
http://health.ivillage.com/
http://www.heartcenteronline.com/
http://www.healthboards.com/
http://health.yahoo.com/
http://about.com/health
Fair
SOURCE: Consumer Health WebWatch. For details on ratings terms, go to http://www.healthratings.org/.
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