The line between reporting new medical discoveries to the wider world and unnecessarily raising expectations is a fine one. Those of us who work in the world of medicine / nursing understand that the process of developing new drugs is a long and laborious one, we also know that some diseases are far more emotive than others and therefore make good stories in the news papers and on TV news programmes. In the last week there have been two stories which strike such a note, the first was regarding a drug to treat Prostate cancer (but more excitingly for those reporting it, might one day be useful for breast cancer) and the other featured today is for Alzheimers.

Neither of these drugs are likely to be prescribable in the near future and indeed the prostate cancer drug has so far only been tested on 21 people, therefore has a long way to go. There is also the small matter in the UK of liscensing and then approval by NICE (no mean feat).

The over hype of all things medical (good and bad) is indicitive of the way in which we now receive news. Gone are the days when information was reported to us, now everything is explained, and opinions are offered (often in a contradictary way). No medical story however is complete without the use of one human example, even if that example might not be indicitive of the majority.

When I worked in rheumatology, some new drugs were on the market, they had been trialled, and some of our patients had received them as part of the trials. The NICE approval process was taking its time and health organisations were concerned that the costs would be prohibitive. Patients used the media (local and national) to get their voices heard, and letters to MPs were written. It is important that those people suffering from a long term condition or illness are privvu to information about what is available and what is being developed. But there has to be a better way of making sure that people gain this knowledge without having their hopes raised in this way!