In a bruising critique of the leading online medical information site, WebMd is described as "synonymous with Big Pharma Shilling ... permeated with pseudomedicine and subtle misinformation ... preys on the fear and vulnerability of its users to sell them half-truths and, eventually, pills."
That by media columnist Virginia Heffernan, who dishes high praise for Mayo Clinic's site in The New York Times Magazine.
She advises, " ... if you want workaday, can-do health information in a nonprofit environment, plug your symptoms into Mayo's Symptom Checker. What you'll get is: No hysteria. No drug peddling. Good medicine. Good ideas."
Appropriately headlined, "A Prescription for Fear," the piece hammers WebMD's business model while conceding the masses will continue to use it, at their own peril.
"Where WebMD is a corporation that started as an ad-supported health-alarmism site with revenues of $504 million in 2010, the Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit medical-practice-and-research group that started as a clinic. Mayo's storied past as the country's premier research hospital, in Rochester, Minn., and its storied present as one of Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" surface in the integrity of the site itself, which - though not ad-free - is spare and neatly organized, with the measured, learned voice of the best doctors. "
Read the complete piece here.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Mayo Clinic website seen as tops; WebMD shills for Big Pharma
via jacksonville.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment