1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
2010 Body of Work by Peter Aldhous, comprising:
"Prescription Sobriety"
"Neighborhoods That Can Kill"
"Psychiatry's New 'Bible' Goes Online"
"Do You Care What Happens To A Baby's DNA Sample?"
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
Jan. 9, 2010 in New Scientist
Jan. 16, 2010 in New Scientist
Feb. 10, 2010 on www.newscientist.com
May 21, 2010 on www.newscientist.com
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
My beat involves reporting on the cutting edge of medical research in its wider social context; as these articles show, I'm especially interested in health disparities, the influence of drug industry marketing practices, and ethical debates surrounding biomedical research.
"Prescription Sobriety": This feature explored current efforts to develop pharmacological treatments for alcohol dependence, explaining that we may soon reach a "Prozac moment" comparable to that drug's transformation of the treatment of depression. I also explored whether this would represent the first step towards the medicalization of social drinking.
"Neighborhoods That Can Kill": In Chicago, the death rate among black women diagnosed with breast cancer 68% than for whites. Why does this heaving metropolis send black women to an early grave? Access to cancer screening and therapy is clearly an important factor. But it isn't the whole story. This article profiled an innovative research project at the University of Chicago which is melding social sciences with cutting-edge molecular medicine to explore how fear of crime and social isolation in some of the toughest neighborhoods on the city's South Side may cause an overload of stress hormones that can send tumors into overdrive. The provocative idea that social environment can affect health directly suggests opportunities for reducing health disparities by providing social support for vulnerable women through local community groups.
"Psychiatry's New 'Bible' Goes Online": On a tight daily deadline, I reported on the release of the draft proposals for inclusion in the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, addressing concerns that these may increase the use of psychoactive drugs. The proposals included a new diagnosis of binge eating disorder, the creation of a single autism spectrum encompassing currently separate diagnoses, and controversial proposals in the area of sexual disorders that could be used to more easily consign sex offenders to indefinite civil commitment.
"Do You Care What Happens To A Baby's DNA Sample?": This online briefing previewed an Institute of Medicine workshop held to consider an emerging controversy — the use of blood samples taken for health screening of newborns in research in medicine forensic genetics. Using a Q&A format, I explored the medical reasons for screening, privacy concerns about research being conducted without consent, and possible solutions to allow parents to choose whether and how their children's samples are used in research.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Scientific literature, accessed through PubMed database American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 website, US census data and Chicago Police crime statistics (see http://peteraldhous.com/chicago.html for Google Earth layer created as a reporting resource)
5. Explain types of human sources used.
Patients and their advocates, physicians, medical researchers, social scientists, bioethicists.
6. Results (if any).
See synopsis.
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
One small correction online to ‘Neighborhoods That Can Kill': the sidebar ‘From City Streets To Country Roads' gave Graham Colditz's affiliation as the University of Washington in St Louis rather than Washington University in St Louis. No other corrections or challenges to the accuracy of my reporting.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
It's easy when reporting on exciting developments in biomedical science to forget the wider social and economic context. There are compelling stories to be told about health disparities, ethical controversies surrounding medical research, and the drug industry's interests in exploiting new scientific and diagnostic developments to further its marketing interests.