The great majority of people rely on media reports for health and medical knowledge. However, medical news reports sometimes present extremely biased views. For example, an alliance of pharmaceutical companies sometimes targets the news media to create fear about disease or bring attention to new treatment. Recently, web-based audits designed to improve the quality of medical news reports have been set up in Australia and Canada, under the name "Media Doctor" and a similar system known as a Health News Review has been started in the U.S. In this paper, firstly we will examine the background to the setting up of the evaluation projects on medical news reports. Secondly we will also attempt to clarify the nature of the current Media Doctor review. Thirdly, we will examine the regulation on direct to consumer advertising of prescription drugs in Canada, Australia, and the United States. Finally, the role of online-based evaluation systems will be considered. They provide objective analysis of health news and the results produce feedback for journalists, General Practitioners and Health Consumers. The projects are intended to contribute to the education of journalists and to bring about better collaboration between the medical profession and journalists, in order to improve the quality of health news.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify one historical feature of imperial power in China through a study of a change in the treatment of two festivals permitted to the emperor alone -the chiao-ssu (郊祀), the festival of heaven, and the tsung-miao (宗廟), the festival of the ancestral spirits. As has been already shown by one scholar, the Han period emperors from the second reign on customarily worshipped at the shrine of Kao-tzu (高祖), the founder of the dynasty, immediately after their coronation. These emperors thereby maintained their own imperial power by receiving Heaven's will through an intermediary, the ancestral spirit. During the T'ang period, however, the treatment of these festivals was more complicated and varied. Both T'ai-tsung (太宗) and Su-tsung (粛宗), who succeeded to the throne before the death of their predecessors, held the ritual of reporting to Heaven on the occasion of their coronation. After his coronation Kao-tsung (高宗) celebrated chiao-ssu prior to tsung-miao, as he intended his chiao-ssu worship to be a response to Heaven's will and thus different from later chiao-ssu worship he performed. Hsuan-tsung (玄宗) held the ritual of yeh-miao (謁廟). That is, unlike other T'ang emperors he worshipped at the shrine of the ancestral spirits just like the Han emperors. In the latter half of the T'ang, most of the emperors held, three festivals, Lao-tzu miao (老子廟), tsung-miao, and chiao-ssu. The dates of these festivals conformed to such standard dates of the chiao-ssu as the winter solistice, thus suggesting that the main emphasis was put on the celebration of the chiao-ssu. The final T'ang emperor, Ai-ti (哀帝), unsuccessfully sought to perpetuate the T'ang dynasty through celebration of the chiao-ssu. In this way the T'ang can be seen to have attached primary importance to the chaio-ssu in marked contrast to the Han. In the Six Dynasties period the yeh-miao ritual was used in the Southern dynasties only when the person succeeding to the throne was not the crown prince. It can also be seen that during the Six Dynasties the chiao-ssu was increasingly celebrated. Such information shows that from the Six Dynasties to the T'ang the yeh-miao ritual gradually became obsolete and gave way to the celebration of the chiao-ssu by a newly-enthroned emperor himself. We may therefor conclude that the role played by the chiao-ssu in the main-tenance of imperial authority gradually increased in importance during the centuries between the Han and T'ang.

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