Celebrities Affect Medical Decisions

(originally aired Feb. 8, 2017) Guest: Sunita Desai, PhD, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard University There’s a reason companies hire beautiful celebrities to sell us everything from watches to weight-loss programs: it works. Our desire to be like the beautiful and famous gets us to make the purchase. This may not be much of a problem when it’s mascara or shampoo being advertised, but what happens when a famous person goes public about a medical test, procedure or treatment they’ve had? Are people just as eager to rush out and copy that, too? If so, what’s the consequence?