The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is now helping out some of the medical dramas on TV get their facts straight. Apparently there have been some episodes where the facts were totally wrong. And that makes the CDC very grumpy.
Surveys show that most people believe the medical information they see on television dramas and soap operas. With fictional TV shows playing such a powerful role in public health education, the government is dedicated to keeping an eye on what Hollywood says. That’s why the CDC is one of four government health agencies that fund the “Hollywood, Health & Society” program at the University of Southern California. The program has an annual budget of nearly $564,000.
It's run by a former CDC employee, Vicki Beck, but the real "talent" are government health officials and other medical experts the program sets up with writers of daytime soap operas, nighttime dramas and other shows.
To be sure, many TV shows consult with doctors, lawyers and others professionals on plot details. Some even hire physicians to be writers. The executive producer of “Law & Order: SVU” is an MD.
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The CBS show Numbers is one example. Numbers writer David Harden called, saying he was pursuing a plotline about black market profiteering in human organs. TV writers like the topic because of it's dramatic potential and persistent hold on the public imagination: Who hasn’t heard the urban myth about the man who meets a hot woman in a bar and wakes up in a bathtub full of ice?
Health officials, however, hate it. They say there is no black market in organs in the United States, and dramatizing the idea may dissuade Americans from becoming organ donors.
But the program took Harden's call and convinced some experts to talk to him. One in particular was skeptical of the plot idea at first, Harden recalled, but answered every question.
The resulting show, which aired in January 2006, was about an international black market that provided detailed information on how the national organ matching program works. Health officials deemed it a success: In a subsequent online survey of about 160 people who said they were not organ donors, 10 percent said they had decided to become donors after watching the episode.
We saw that episode -- it was a good one. But we still believe that meeting a hot woman in a bar could result in waking up in a tub of ice, missing a kidney. It could happen.
