Fauber: Jaw implants a ‘long road to hell.’
If I read any more investigative medical stories by John Fauber, I’ll never see a doctor again.
In just the past year, Fauber, a reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (and MedPage Today–more on that below) has taken on conflicts of interest related to spinal implants, the disclosure of conflicts of interest in medical journal articles, and spinal fusions–the latter in a story that included this gem:
One of the FDA advisers at the meeting raised a concern about nine of the doctors whose research on the product had been submitted to the FDA: The doctors all had a financial stake in the product, and their test results with it were nearly twice as good as the doctors who did not have a financial interest.
At this point, I’m running out of things to say about Fauber’s stories. These are, as I’ve said before, prime examples of newspaper investigative reporting and writing.
Yesterday, Fauber went after conflicts of interest in the use and misuse of artificial jaw implants. From the story:
The Journal Sentinel’s review of several thousand pages of testimony and other documents found that the FDA ignored warnings, patient testimony and its own staff recommendations to sidewith device companies whose research was conducted by doctors with a financial stake in the outcome.
“There were a million red flags,” said Mark Patters, who served as an FDA advisory panel member for all four of the device hearings and who voted to approve three of them between 1999 and 2002. “You don’t have to know the particulars to know the science wasn’t there.”
Fauber began working on this conflict-of-interest series in February, with the aim of producing 10 such stories in a year, and he’s on track. Many reporters would be pleased to produce a story like this in a year. Fauber does them in a month or two.
As professionals, we can admire Fauber’s work, and, maybe, bring some of this into our own reporting. But it’s important to remember that these stories are about real people with real pain and tragic losses. People who are being told they need jaw implants–and not just those who happen to live in the Journal Sentinel’s circulation area–should see Fauber’s story.
That’s where MedPage Today comes in. Since February, it has paid a fee to the Journal Sentinel–and a freelance fee to Fauber–for permission to publish his stories simultaneously on its website. (Its version of the jaw implant story is here.) MedPage Today is aimed at doctors, so its articles are re-edited slightly for that audience. Peggy Peck, executive editor of MedPage Today, declined to discuss the specifics of the arrangement but said that “our support of this venture is very significant.”
Fauber told me that he thinks the main advantage of the arrangement for the newspaper is to get broader exposure for his stories.
It’s yet another thing newspapers are experimenting with to adapt to a changing world.
But that’s not what’s important about Fauber’s stories. Thousands of people who read his stories might decide not to get painful or fatal jaw or spinal implants, thus avoiding the “long road to hell” that thousands have already traveled. That’s what’s important. And if newspapers are to survive in any form, that’s the kind of news they must give their readers.
- Paul Raeburn
