text_1: Heart Device Cuts Death Rate
text_2: This piece asked more tough questions than the story in the LA Times. It also provided readers with more of the hard data than the other story. It broke down a complicated topic and allowed readers to view the evidence from multiple vantage points. Ultimately, though, like the Times piece, it did not take the extra step of giving readers and health policymakers the information they need to assess whether this industry-funded study is an important discovery. Will this truly save millions of lives? Or is it a baby step that is, as this story mentions, more of a “boost for the heart-rhythm device business, whose sales have flattened in recent years”? Those questions are raised but not adequately addressed. Defibrillators are a significant investment, and their success as a clinical intervention depends in part on whether their widespread use will be funded. Both stories discuss the broad scope of the problem — 22 million people with heart failure worldwide — and they raise the issue of the devices’ costs. Stories like this also need to provide readers the context of how much additional benefit individuals and society as a whole would reap from increased use of these expensive devices. Reporters should always be skeptical when a tried and true device for an acutely ill population is repackaged for a broader group of patients.