Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Dark Report Asks: Why No Media Star for the Lab Community?

Every day the media has MULTIPLE articles on lab testing and COVID - shortage of tests, quality of tests, type of tests, how to use tests, what's next in tests.  It's a torrent of media - about lab tests.  This has never happened before in human history.

So...

The lab and pathology trade journal DARK REPORT asks an interesting question in an opinion piece in the March 30, 2020 issue:

"Can Clinical Labs, Pathology Ever Produce a National Figure like a Dr. Fauci or a Dr. Oz?"

It's a good point.  Public health figures get media value (Dr. Brix); prior leaders of CDC and FDA get a lot of media (Tom Frieden, Scott Gottlieb).   Where's the laboratorian or pathologist among them?

With the colossal emphasis on lab testing in the global high-trillion-dollar COVID crisis, it would be great if one of the top 3 or 4 names we hear every day was a laboratorian or pathologist.  Dark Report makes a good point.


We occasionally see e.g. George Lundberg (here) or Roger Klein (here) or Robert Boorstein (here, here) but not at the level of familiar-face media visibility that Dark Report thinks is important.    The current AMA CEO, James Madara, was prior Chair of Pathology at Emery, but I never see him quoted as a voice for pathology and COVID.

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Separately, an April 27 article at MedCityNews by Blair Holliday on status and empowerment of lab professionals - here.