List date(s) this work was published or aired.
10-Aug-11
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
The placebo-controlled trial is paramount in medical research, but for a crop of experimental therapies for Parkinson’s disease, the placebo control is no sugar pill. Instead, it’s an invasive procedure — called sham brain surgery — in which researchers mimic the surgical intervention they are testing as closely as possible, putting the patient under general anesthesia, drilling a hole in the skull, and in some cases penetrating the white matter of the brain. Some neurologists say the many biases in such studies make the use of sham surgery imperative, but according to others, the procedure is a potentially dangerous and possibly unnecessary bit of biomedical theatrics. A group of patient activists are going further still, claiming that sham surgery isn’t just useless– it’s actually killing off valuable therapies. In exploring this controversial topic, this story aimed to examine ideas and assumptions about the value of placebo controls as well as the kinds of risks patients are willing to take in participating in clinical trials.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Numerous published research studies, online patient forums discussing issues in clinical trials for Parkinson’s, and archived video footage from a two-day meeting at the National Institutes of Health about sham brain surgery that took place in summer, 2009.
Explain types of human sources used.
I spoke with about ten researchers with different views on the issue of whether and how sham surgery for Parkinson’s disease should be used — these included neurologists as well as ethicists. I also spoke with five people with Parkinson’s disease who described their experience in deciding whether or not to participate in trials with a sham surgery arm.
Results:
n/a
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.
n/a
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Working on this story really made me aware of how my own biases about a topic creep into interpreting my sources’ words. Probably because I was trained as a scientist, my first response was to dismiss the contentions of the folks with Parkinson’s I spoke with– that sham surgery was actually causing promising therapies to fail — as illogical and emotionally driven. It took time and several conversations before I could see their own valid logic and try to lay it out in the story. So I guess my advice about a topic like this is to really take the time to do that.