Give Priority to More Serious Diseases (7-03) Do people in the United States develop their perceptions of what is important in the world based upon the number of times they see something reported in the news media? More specifically, do Americans prioritize the threats of acquiring, or dying from, a specific illness based on the number of media reports of others getting the disease or dying from it? It's easy to lose perspective when it comes to which diseases, maladies, syndromes, or contagions are the most important if all one hears or reads about them is from news outlets. Using some common sense, plus a little research, one can regain proper perspective on the likelihood of acquiring any specific disease, despite its importance having been blown out of proportion in the media. A couple of months ago, for instance, people in Southeast Asia were wearing medical masks in public places as a presumed defense against getting SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS was the new and dreaded disease du jour for much of the first half of this year. It sprang up from nowhere and it killed more of its victims than most other flu-like viruses. For awhile, it was not even known what caused it or how it was spread. A search on the Yahoo.com news site reveals a total of 35,983 news stories that have been published on that site about SARS. Remember, SARS has not even been around for a year yet, so all those news stories have been concentrated just within the last few months. A similar search on AIDS reveals that 16,986 news stories have been written about that disease. AIDS has been around about 20 years or so. It was the mystery disease of the ‘80s. Ok, now for a reality check. According to the World Health Organization there have been 8,436 confirmed cases of SARS as of July 7. Of those who got the disease, 812 died. Those are world- wide statistics. Yet the preponderance of news coverage on SARS caused near panic conditions in some locations, including Canada, where several localized cases were reported. What about killer diseases that are not only much more prevalent, more also more lethal, such as cancer, heart disease, or diabetes? These diseases, though real enough, have been around a very long time, so they have lost their ability to panic the public. Another search of the Yahoo news site gave only 8,343 news stories published about diabetes, 3,718 stories about lung cancer, 6,153 news items about breast cancer, and 2,734 stories concerning high blood pressure. Even a search for heart disease, the number one killer, yielded only 9,910 results. Doing the math reveals that there have been more news stories published about SARS in less than a year than about heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and two of the most prevalent forms of cancer combined. That's why the dread of SARS leads to fear and panic while a more reasonable dread of diabetes is uncommon. Yet diabetes kills far more people. It is estimated that more than 17 million people in the U.S. alone have diabetes. That's more than six percent of the population. And in 1999 more than 200,000 Americans died as a direct or indirect result of diabetes. Despite those statistics, news stories about diabetes garner little more than a yawn from the public. That's because, in spite of its relative importance, diabetes is not new and different. It doesn't have an unknown cause, and it can't be spread by casual contact. But as priorities go, the highly preventable-but-deadly diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer should be ranked high on the list. The relatively rare and more obscure diseases, such as AIDS and certainly SARS should garner only occasional mentions in the press. But the press does not measure a disease's newsworthiness based on its prevalence nor its ability to kill, only on its fear factor and trendiness. Few new cases of SARS have been reported recently, so its time in the limelight is about over. Mad Cow Disease, West Nile virus, and the flesh-eating bacteria have all had their fifteen minutes of fame. Perhaps it's time for the media, and the public, to give more attention to the diseases that warrant it - those that are more widespread and kill the most people.