Opinion: Colorectal cancer screening: Science should trump convenience
It’s been difficult for TV watchers to avoid the sprightly Cologuard box jumping around on its spindly blue legs, beckoning viewers to take an at-home, stool-based test for colorectal cancer. Joining in the multimillion-dollar national public relations and advertising blitz by Cologuard’s maker, Exact Sciences, are singer/actor Harry Connick Jr., golfer Jerry Kelly, and the Green Bay Packers.
Celebrity endorsements of health care products are nothing new. As early as 1958, Milton Berle’s jokes about Miltown, an antidepressant, were promoted to gossip columnists by the drug’s maker. Today’s direct-to-consumer marketing makes Berle’s efforts seem tame in comparison. Many such campaigns, including the one for Cologuard, seem like public health campaigns that are barely recognizable for what they really are: product advertisements.
