The United States may be one of the most developed and most advanced countries in the world but this did not spare its citizens from believing in medical conspiracy theories. If you believe that the government is aware that cellphone causes cancer but does nothing about it, you're not alone. A new study found that almost 50 percent of the American population actually falls for medical conspiracy theories.
In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine March 17, Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood, from the Department of Political Science of the University of Chicago in Illinois, analyzed data from an online survey answered by 1,351 adults between August and September 2013 extrapolated to represent the U.S. population.
The participants who took part in the survey were asked to indicate if they agree or disagree on the claims of six popular medical conspiracy theories which include claims that vaccines cause autism, that companies dump dangerous chemicals to the environment under the guise of water fluoridation, that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prevents the public from getting natural cures for cancer and other diseases because of pressure from pharmaceutical companies, that health officials are aware of but mum on the cancer-causing effects of cellphones, that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) infected many African Americans with HIV via a hepatitis inoculation program and that genetically modified foods were disseminated to shrink the world's population.
Almost half or 49 percent of the participants agreed with at least one of the presented conspiracy theories. "Although it is common to disparage adherents of conspiracy theories as a delusional fringe of paranoid cranks, our data suggest that medical conspiracy theories are widely known, broadly endorsed, and highly predictive of many common health behaviors," the researchers wrote.
The researchers also noted that people who believe in conspiracies were more likely to avoid traditional medicine and opt for alternative medicine instead. Oliver, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said their findings have implications for health service providers. He said that doctors should realize that their patients who believe in conspiracy theories are not crazy and should understand that these particular patients are just less likely to adhere to a prescription regimen.
"It's important to increase information about health and science to the public," Oliver said. "I think scientific thinking is not a very intuitive way to see the world. For people who don't have a lot of education, it's relatively easy to reject the scientific way of thinking about things."
