Public Relations and Nutrigenomics: Lessons from Gerontology, Part I

The 2nd International Nutrigenomics Conference was held last week in Amsterdam.  Press coverage is scant.  There is one article in Nature on the conference, but it is available only to subscribers.

ERIKA CHECK, Consumers warned that time is not yet ripe for nutrition profiling. Nature 426(6963): 107.

Although promises exist for tailoring nutritional intake according to biological dispositions, as the title suggests this article emphasizes that nutrition profiling remains a concept under study and is not ready for mainstream consumption.

Given the constant struggle to legitimize much of scientific research, there is fear in the hearts of scientists, like restauranteurs, that a bad review tends to go farther faster than a good one, especially in an atmosphere where opportunities to reach the public are scarce.  In this case, it is not the field of nutritional genomics receiving a bad review, but individuals at the boundary of the field rushing to market products of dubious merit while claiming they are based on the most recent scientific evidence.  This article raises the question of whether nutritional genomics needs a strategy for separating itself from individuals or groups operating falsely under the same banner.

There are lessons to be learned from other frontiers in the health sciences.  This problem has been particularly salient in gerontology, where scientific progress is frequently co-opted by disingenuous companies who prey upon ill and uninformed consumers.  Last year a group of 51 scientists published a position statement as an attempt to separate legitimate aging research from the massive "anti-aging" industry peddling dubious and sometimes dangerous products.  This strategy, referred to as the "war on anti-aging medicine" sparked an internal debate among gerontologists about the challenges of maintaining disciplinary integrity.  These issues were recently debated by S. Jay Olshansky and Robert Binstock, both major contributors to gerontology.  (see the video or read the transcript here).
 

November 13, 2003 | Filed Under nutritional-genomics, policy 

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