Tale of Two Headlines: Heartburn Drugs Are Risky, Or Are They Okay?

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What a difference a headline makes. An alert tipster in Minnesota sent the Media Research Center a clip from the August 10 St. Paul Pioneer Press, which included this scary-sounding headline over a story about a Food and Drug Administration report: “Heartburn Drugs Subject of Federal Safety Inquiry.”

The story, distributed by the Los Angeles Times News Service, was about whether two commonly prescribed drugs, Nexium and Prilosec, might cause heart problems. Maybe, suggested writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar: “Federal regulators Thursday said they have opened a safety investigation of two popular heartburn drugs — Nexium, marketed as the ‘purple pill,’ and Prilosec, its older chemical cousin — after receiving clinical data that appeared to link them to serious heart problems.”

The only problem was that the FDA hadn’t said the drugs were dangerous, as a little Web surfing quickly determined. “FDA: Heartburn Drugs Seem OK for Heart,” read the WashingtonPost.com headline over the Associated Press version of the same story. The AP’s lede: “The popular heartburn drugs Prilosec and Nexium don’t appear to spur heart problems, say preliminary U.S. and Canadian probes announced Thursday.” Much more comforting.

Last March, the MRC’s Business and Media Institute published “Prescription for Bias,” an extensive study documenting the generally hostile media attitude towards drug companies that make life-saving medicines. You can find the whole report here.