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The tech giants are criticized for the role that fake medical information disseminated online may have played in the measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest. There are now at least 61 confirmed cases of highly contagious virus in Clark County, Washington State, just across Portland, Oregon.
Nearly 90% of the confirmed cases involved people who were non-immune. The majority of patients are children aged 1 to 10 years.
Last week, the representative Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Sent a letter to Google and Facebook to ask him how the companies manage the published publications. Anti-vaccination messages. Schiff said "deeply concerned about lowering vaccination rates" and asked for additional measures to "tackle this growing problem".
Google, owner of YouTube, said it was working to provide more context for some search queries regarding health information, such as links to third-party sources such as the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
In a statement to CBS News, Facebook said: "We have taken steps to reduce the spread of false health information on Facebook, but we know we still have a lot of work to do. we will be doing announcing soon. "
Nicholas Thompson, editor of Wired, explains that one important factor in the spread of medical misinformation is that feelings tend to spread faster than the facts.
"Social networks are based on emotion, so content that makes us feel emotion, whether it's fear [or] whether it's uncertainty, it's spreading very fast, "he told CBS This Morning. So, as they say, a lie spreads on the other side of the world before the truth can find its place. "
Dr. Tara Narula, medical contributor to CBS News, said she sees more and more patients skeptical about medical guidelines, based on information found on the Internet.
"They go to" Dr. Google "to get a second opinion.They go there because it's easy, they're not going to have any judgment, they do not have to pay a fee. and then they do not have to make an appointment, "she said." The problem is that we see this as widespread, not just for vaccines but for drugs such as: statins, supplements that promote well-being, weightlossalternative cancer treatments ".
While experts believe that patients should do their part by talking to their doctor about their health concerns, technology companies should also be more accountable in the fight against the spread of medical misinformation.
"I think one of the important lessons to remember is that the" Dr. Google "can improve," Thompson said. "Engineers can make the Internet a better source of information by changing the way algorithms work."
Narula recommends that patients obtain reliable medical information from government sites such as the CDC or NIH, as well as medical associations such as the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Diabetes Association, and reputable universities.
People can also be trained to analyze what they read.
"For example, look and see who the author is," Narula said. Was this published in a peer-reviewed journal?
study? Who benefits? Was it a study for which you may not want to base your decisions, or was it several studies? How many subjects have been studied, 100 or 500 000? What kind of lawsuit? An observational study, [which is] not the best, or randomized controlled trial, [which is] much better to make your decisions. "
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