Say it ain't so!

Here is an article from this morning's MediaLife email, it's pretty funny that some one would do research on such a thing (leave it to the brits, ha).

Stunner: Soap opera docs are fakes
British study rips lid off miracle recoveries
By Heidi Dawley Jan 9, 2006

Newsflash for soap opera fans: What you see depicted on your favorite daytime drama may not accurately portray real life, in case you thought it did.

This is especially true when it comes to doctoring, it turns out. Those hunk MDs on America’s soaps may be able to induce a rapid heartbeat in adoring viewers, but their skills in treating serious maladies are pure fantasy, as are so many of their results. This is especially so when it comes to reviving patients from comas. Their seemingly lifeless bodies suddenly pop right up in bed and often immediately begin chattering.

That's not how things really work, and some distinguished researchers in Britain are advising the world accordingly. Amid the pages of the lofty and respected British Medical Journal is an article in the Christmas issue that rips the lid off these various daytime medical deceits.After studying nine American television soap operas over a 10-year period, the researchers found that storylines portraying comas were, let’s just say, ridiculously rosy in their outcome, with both survival rates and the level of function regained far outstripping reality.

Almost all coma patients--92 percent--are revived on such soaps as “General Hospital,” “One Life to Live” and “Days of Our Lives,” researchers found. In real life, half or more coma patients die.Similarly, all those soap patients who emerged from comas seem to recover fully. In real life, few actually ever recover, about one in 10, and then only after months of intense rehabilitation.

“Patients in soap operas who experience coma after traumatic or non-traumatic injury have a better than expected chance of survival. Moreover, they are very likely to regain full function,” conclude the researchers in their report. The MBJ article is part spoof, for sure, a year-end goof of the sort of pieces that dominate such publications, but the authors were also out to make a point. And it's a point that's especially timely with all the concern over the medical condition of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and critically injured miner Randal McCloy Jr., both in medically induced comas.

“Although these programmes are presented as fiction, they may contribute to unrealistic expectations of recovery,” write the researchers, led by David Casarett, assistant professor at Philadelphia’s Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion. He and the others believe the daytime dramas are a pervasive source of health information, reaching more than 40 million viewers in the U.S. and others in at least 90 other countries.

Calling for a more balanced picture to be presented, the researchers write: “These findings show that soap operas portray an unrealistically optimistic version of the outcomes of patients in comas.”