Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Why The Secrecy About ALS?

Here's an interesting experiment.

Go to http://www.healthjournalism.org/ to visit the site of the Association of Healthcare Journalists. That's the professional organization for all of those serious print and broadcast media journalists. Browse around. Try Resources, Tip Sheets. Use the search box to find materials about ALS... or amyotrophic... or Gehrig's... or motor neuron disease...

It's no wonder this disease doesn't get any attention. We've not left any clues or ideas for those with the power of the pen or microphone. Great Caesar's ghost!
Where is the ALS p.r. machine?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here's a sentence from the recent ALSA letter-writing campaign for Veterans' Day (take a deep breath) --

"Very few people, including those serving in the military today, know that veterans are twice as likely to die from ALS – the deadly disease that took the life of baseball legend Lou Gehrig and which today is known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease."

I was surprised that they started a sentence with the idea that very few people know. It seems to me that it has been their job for the last 5+ years to make sure that people know. "Very few" is not acceptable and is hardly a tribute to their effectiveness in raising awareness.