E-HEALTH: Industry Leaders Seeking Ethics Standards

      Dr. C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general and part-owner of the successful consumer health Web site bearing his name, Tuesday convened representatives from roughly a dozen leading Internet health care companies to discuss the possibility of establishing ethics standards for Web site content, privacy and sponsorship. The industry is seeking to show it can "police itself" in an effort to avoid government regulation and to address criticism that the sites contain misleading, potentially harmful information and fail to fully disclose sponsorship. Although the group did not reach agreement on an ethics policy, participants labeled the gathering of competitors a "milestone." Participants included Joel Kahn, chief medical officer for Johns Hopkins-sponsored InteliHealth, and former JAMA editor George Lundberg, who now serves as editor in chief of Medscape. (AP/Florida Times-Union, 10/14).