A few weeks ago, the New York Times covered a controversy about the cosmetics company Clinique buying the naming rights to a new center at a leading hospital, the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. The piece included an alleged quote trivializing psoriasis that the Times later admitted had not been said. Unfortunately, what was actually said was not so great either.
The Times was trying to quote Dr. Richard D. Granstein, chairman of the dermatology department at Weill Cornell, who was perhaps a tad defensive about having to defend something called the Clinique Skin Wellness Center at a major teaching hospital.
Here is the phony quote the Times later repudiated:
Dr. Granstein called relationships with beauty companies a “slippery slope” for medicine. But he said that beauty was not a new territory for medical schools because dermatology inherently involves a patient’s appearance. Acne and psoriasis, for example, are “essentially cosmetic diseases,” he said.
But three weeks later, on Feb. 15, the Times admitted that the quote was wrong. In fact, the paper said in a published correction:
An article on Jan. 25 about a new Clinique-sponsored clinic at Weill Medical College of Cornell University referred incorrectly to a comment about psoriasis by Dr. Richard D. Granstein, chairman of Weill’s dermatology department. He said that psoriasis “can itch, but you don’t die from it. It’s often a cosmetic issue. For many people it is not debilitating.” Dr. Granstein did not say that psoriasis is “essentially” a cosmetic disease.
Well, the accurate quote does not thrill us either, although we recognize that speaking on the record to reporters is hard and everyone who does it states things awkwardly at times. The actual quote unfairly minimizes the full range of psoriasis symptoms, and borders on being flippant or dismissive. He could have just said that obviously, dermatology deals in part with physical appearance, an issue of perhaps excessive importance in our society.
But the broader challenge that the quote reflects is a long-held and persistent belief by many important people–doctors, lawmakers, insurance company decision-makers–that psoriasis is what the reporter inaccurately put quotation marks around but what the Doctor’s actual words were conveying: psoriasis is ‘essentially’ ‘cosmetic’.
This is an interesting conundrum for anyone trying to get psoriasis taken seriously. After all, it is in fact true that for millions of people, (mild) psoriasis is merely a minor annoyance, and is largely a cosmetic issue. But it is also literally true that for millions of others, psoriasis is a significant daily problem in their lives, and for many of them, is debilitating.
So what do we do? Psoriasis can be mild and trivial. Psoriasis can also be so bad that people can’t work, don’t leave the house, consider suicide. Psoriasis is so variable, are we just doomed to have it trivialized in the media forever?
Of course not. We can alter public perceptions of psoriasis through sustained, aggressive educational efforts with the media and others.
Consider autism. Autism, believe it or not, can be mild. You probably meet people every day in your life or at work who are on the mild edge of an “autism spectrum disorder.” They are included in the 1 in 150 children with autism figure. But the autism community has correctly framed the issue that autism is often so devastating that we as a society must do everything we can to defeat it. We agree with them about autism. And we feel that way about psoriasis.
We, as a community, need to be firm and insistent that psoriasis is a serious disease. The fact that many people have mild cases (blessedly), does not change that.
Agree? Disagree? Feel free to add your comments below by clicking on the # COMMENTS link.
And if you would like to give the Times a perspective on psoriasis different than Dr. G.’s, you can email a Letter to the Editor.
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