Lab coats optional on Web 'rounds'

Experts fear, for example, that commercial interests could damage the integrity of the medical blogosphere unless the profession agrees on when and where a blogger's conflicts of interest should be divulged. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, says public relations firms are known to have some bloggers on retainer to ensure favorable mentions of their clients. And Lagu cited an online survey of healthcare bloggers, in which 29% of respondents said they had been approached by public relations professionals to endorse certain products. The survey, prepared by the commercial group Envision Solutions LLC, also found that 52% had written at least one post endorsing such products.

Medical blogging is such a new feature, Lagu adds, that it has scarcely been noticed by the profession's graybeards -- medical community leaders who would ordinarily initiate debate on appropriate behavior of their peers. Amid that leadership vacuum, she holds, the medical blogosphere has become much larger and more cacophonous, and patients' medical secrets are clearly being spilled in the process.

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melissa.healy@latimes.com

For links to the blogs that are mentioned, read this article online at latimes.com/health.

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The patient is thriving! Come check the vital signs of the medblogosphere (if that's a word) at latimes.com /medblogs.