{"id":5708,"date":"2021-08-03T15:22:08","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T07:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asiamd.com\/?p=5708"},"modified":"2025-08-05T07:57:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T07:57:03","slug":"how-harmful-is-fake-medical-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/2021\/08\/03\/how-harmful-is-fake-medical-news-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How harmful is fake medical news?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/asiamd.com\/fake-medical-news-singapore\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fake Medical News Singapore<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: The search for the true Medical &amp; Health News with Asia MD.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fight against the Covid-19 is being undermined by an epidemic of epic proportions: The proliferation of fake medical news.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In July 2021, a<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/07\/25\/world\/europe\/disinformation-social-media.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">news report in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> highlighted a disquieting boom in the disinformation-for-hire industry. Its opening paragraph said that several French and German social media influencers were approached in May to promote falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AsiaMDWhatsAppEN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><b><i>Follow us on WhatsApp for the latest updates: https:\/\/bit.ly\/AsiaMDWhatsAppEN\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Closer to home, a group of doctors started an online petition a few months ago to call for<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/asiamd.com\/2021\/07\/27\/10-myths-on-covid-19-infection\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ivermectin<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to be used as part of an outpatient treatment plan for Covid-19, claiming that the anti-parasite drug had been overlooked by the World Health Organization (WHO) and regulatory authorities as a possible preventive treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The same group of medical professionals has called for children in Singapore to be given Covid-19 vaccines made with the traditional inactivated whole virus method (i.e. Sinovac) instead of the mRNA ones in Singapore\u2019s national vaccination programme. The World Health Organization has yet to approve Sinovac for use in people younger than 18 years old.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These actions clearly aim to undermine public confidence in the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/asiamd.com\/2021\/01\/25\/safety-mrna-covid-19-vaccines\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mRNA vaccines<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. However, one type of fake news is not like the other. What do we mean?<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n<h2><b>Two classifications of fake medical news<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fake news falls into two classifications: misinformation and disinformation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Misinformation happens when facts are misinterpreted or when the seriousness of a public health crisis is played down, said Associate Professor Kenneth Mak, Director of Medical Services of Singapore&#8217;s Ministry of Health.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/asiamd.com\/cancer-fact-or-fiction-science-fact-or-science-fiction-common-cancer-myths\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cancer Fact or Fiction &#8211; How can we tell?<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When misinformation is spread to the population at large, this can lead to people \u201cnot doing things they should and doing things they shouldn\u2019t,\u201d he told AsiaMD.com. \u201cIt could lead to a general reluctance to take on the recommendations of experts, doctors and health authorities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An example A\/Prof Mak cited was the attitude that Singapore\u2019s population did not need to be vaccinated, as the nation was not seeing high infection rates as some other regions. He said: \u201cSuch messages did not intend to deliberately harm people, but the socialising of these messages resulted in a lot of hesitancy to take up measures that are important to them, and inadvertently, that causes some level of harm.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disinformation, which is the other type of fake news, is spread with deliberate intent to mislead people with clear untruths. Disinformation,<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/disinformation\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">defined by Merriam-Webster<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as \u201cfalse information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumours) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth,\u201d tends to steer people away from adhering to the correct medical treatments or behaviours.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/asiamd.com\/2021\/08\/10\/is-it-important-to-seek-a-second-doctors-opinion\/\"><b><i>Is it important to seek a second doctor\u2019s opinion? <\/i><\/b><b>You might be surprised that the best person to consult is your GP<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Making decisions based on fake medical news can harm your health. Recognise falsehoods with pro tips from Singapore\u2019s Director of Medical Services Kenneth Mak. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-infectious-diseases"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"ko","enabled_languages":["en","zh","ko","ja","mn","vi","ta","th","ms","km","id","my","hi"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":true},"zh":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":true},"ko":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"ja":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"mn":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"vi":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"ta":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"th":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"ms":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"km":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"id":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"my":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"hi":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9621,"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708\/revisions\/9621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiamd.bqubetech.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}