My article Tolvaptan – New drug for low sodium in blood” has been recently quoted in an article titled “Content of weblogs written by health professionals” (pdf link) published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine by implying that the post is a product endorsement. The actual quote is:
“Up until now the treatment of this condition involved free water restriction and removal of inciting factors. Now a new drug – Tolvaptan promises to change it all.”
However, the article missed out the remaining post which in the end had my take on Tolvaptan -
“The main problem with the drug is that once approved, most clinicians will prescribe it for for a very long time especially in patients prone to developing and remaining hyponatremic. Since the study duration was only for 30 days, many new side effects may appear when the drug is finally marketed.”
Also my blog post was written in context of describing an article published in New England Journal of medicine and not for drug promotion which the article failed to mention. I should also add that I have no relationship with any pharmaceutical company as the article later implies (although not directly to this website) by writing:
“A recent survey reveals that 29% of blog authors have been approached by public relations professionals to endorse specific products, and 52% of them have written one post endorsing such products in their blog content. These endorsements are not advertisements that appear on the website; they are written into the blog narrative, often without any acknowledgement that they are paid promotions. Although we did find blogs that promoted health care products within their entries, we were unable to determine whether these were paid endorsements, because we found no disclosures indicating authors’ conflicts of interest.”
To all this I should also add that I pursue blogging because I have a passion for computers and technology and believe that we can help ourselves (physicians) as well as our patients by empowering them with the latest information in medicine that they can discuss with their physicians.
