Publications
Recent Posts
Bio Med Central: “Immune Boosting” in the time of COVID: selling immunity on Instagram
The concept of “immune boosting” is scientifically misleading and often used to market unproven products and therapies. This paper presents an...
Taylor & Francis Online: The consumer representation of DNA ancestry testing on YouTube
Ancestry testing and personal social media accounts were commonly promoted, demonstrating biotechnological hype where promotion abounds and...
BMC Medical Ethics: The law and problematic marketing by private umbilical cord blood banks
Private umbilical cord blood banking is a for-profit industry in which parents pay to store blood for potential future use. Governments have noted...
OSF PrePrints: Does Debunking Work? Correcting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media
One of the defining characteristics of this pandemic has been the spread of misinformation. Indeed, the World Health Organization famously called...
JOGC: Non-Invasive Prenatal Screening: Navigating the Relevant Legal Norms
In sum, the law will define and bound the acceptable behaviour of physicians recommending or administering NIPS, and nudge the technology's...
Nature: Pseudoscience and COVID-19 — we’ve had enough already
The scientific community must take up cudgels in the battle against bunk.
Érudit: Research, Digital Health Information and Promises of Privacy: Revisiting the Issue of Consent
L’obligation de préserver la vie privée des patients et des participants à la recherche est fondamentale en recherche biomédicale.
Canadian Journal of Kidney Health and Disease: Policy Challenges for Organ Allocation in an Era of "Precision Medicine"
March 20, 2020 Timothy Caulfield, Blake Murdoch, Ruth Sapir-Pichhadze, Paul Keown
Future Medicine: Portrayal of umbilical cord blood research in the North American popular press: promise or hype?
Findings demonstrate the need for continual monitoring of the media portrayals of UCB as stem cell and transplantation research develops and as...
Journal of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology: The Law and Ethics of Switching from Biologic to Biosimilar in Canada
An in depth look in the implementation of nonmedical/'forced' switches by cutting drug coverage for reference biologics and funding only less...
Transplantation Direct: Public Solicitation and The Canadian Media: Two Cases of Living Liver Donation, Two Different Stories
Two stories of public solicitation for living liver donors received substantial Canadian media attention in 2015: The Wagner family, with twin...
BioMedCentral: Archives of Physiotherapy: The "subluxation" issue: an analysis of chiropractic clinic websites
Based on the controversy surrounding vertebral subluxation, the substantial number of clinic websites aligning their practice with vertebral...
The Globe and Mail: Unproven stem-cell treatments can be dangerous. The hype needs to stop
Timothy Caulfield Special to the Globe and Mail Published July 10, 2019
Stem Cell Reports: How to Peddle Hope: An Analysis of YouTube Patient Testimonials of Unproven Stem Cell Treatments
Providers capitalize on patient testimonials to market unproven stem cell treatments (SCTs). We evaluated 159 YouTube videos and found patients...
Canadian Journal of Bioethics: Health Misinformation and the Power of Narrative Messaging in the Public Sphere
Numerous social, economic and academic pressures can have a negative impact on representations of biomedical research. We review several of the...
The American Journal of Gastroenterology: Promotion of Testing for Celiac Disease and the Gluten-Free Diet Among Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners
Boyer, Graham; Caulfield, Timothy, BSc, LLB, LLM; Green, Peter H. R., MD; Lebwohl, Benjamin, MD, MS
PLOS: Media portrayal of illness-related medical crowdfunding: A content analysis of newspaper articles in the United States and Canada
Medical crowdfunding is a growing phenomenon, and newspapers are publishing on the topic. This research analyzed how illness-related crowdfunding...
Genetics in Medicine: CRISPR in the North American popular press
Alessandro Marcon, Zubin Master, Vardit Ravitsky, and Timothy Caulfield.
Policy Options: When crowdfunding pays for bunk medical treatments
Crowdfunding platforms have a role to play in countering the misinformation spread by campaigns that raise money for unproven homeopathic...