Honesty: More About
by Kieron McFaddenThis article sketches out one example of an essentially dishonest Big Pharma operation: the use of online "health information service" websites. Their purpose is to provide data volunteered by their visitors to the marketing arms of the drug peddling corporations.
On the subject of honesty, to which I have referred in a couple of articles, I should make clear that dishonesty can comprise the telling of untruths and false reports about situations or events and/or the withholding of key facts about situations or events so that others can be hoodwinked.
The proliferation of websites promoting "free" questionnaires so that the unsuspecting public might furnish data that will help drugs corporations to sell them drugs and the case of Dr Mehmet Oz are two interrelated cases in point.
Let us take the online questionnaire issue first and cite an example: there is a website called RealAge, which appears to operate as a kind of front group or window for the pharmaceutical corporations. This relationship with the psycho-pharmacy is not made clear to visitors of the site who then fill in its questionnaire.
Corporate sponsors of RealAge include, surprise surprise, most of the major drug companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Genentech, Wyeth and many others. RealAge is essentially a marketing platform for Big Pharma and their most profitable pharmaceutical products such as Adderall, Ambien and Celebrex. It is disguised however to look like a consumer health information service.
The New York Times recently, and aptly, called RealAge "a window for drug makers" and said, "The test has received widespread publicity because of its affiliation with Dr. Mehmet Oz."
I’ll come to the famous - but I would imagine by now considerably discredited - Dr Oz in my next article.
For now, let us focus on how the Real Age website operates:
The RealAge website provides to its sponsors, the drugs corporations, information provided by its members and this information is then used by those corporations to solicit consumer sales using marketing messages targeted at publics by age, health condition, life issues and so on.
People who land on the site provide an e-mail address to take the RealAge online test. Throughout the test they are asked if they would like a "free RealAge membership". If someone answers "yes" to one of these prompts, they become "RealAge members," and the results of their test results are fed into a marketing database.
RealAge then allows its sponsors - the drug companies - to send e-mail messages based on those test results. In so doing it acts, as the, new York Times put it " as a clearinghouse for drug companies, including Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline," by allowing them to use its visitors’ test answers to formulate marketing messages based upon those answers from the test. The data can include, for instance, whether someone is taking antidepressants, or how sexually active they are and even whether their marriage is happy.
Now, I don’t know about you, but this approach strikes me as sneaky and less than honest.
Naturally, given that they come from corporations dedicated to peddling drugs, the "solutions" provided to whatever life difficulties are being targeted, always involve the person paying for and taking one or more drugs.
For most mental and physical situations there are solutions that do not involve drugging the person. This may not be very profitable for the drug peddlers who do not therefore want the public to know this, but it is nevertheless true.
To take one example: a person whose cholesterol levels are beginning to climb can usually solve this much more safely, cheaply and with good consequences for his or her overall health by straightforward dietary changes.
He does not have to of course. Possibly the statins present a "quick fix" on the order of kicking the TV set to adjust the picture, for which some might be willing to trade the side effects and their overall health but the person has a right to know at the very least that safe and very workable alternatives exist.
However, in order to extract money from that person’s wallet, the drugs peddlers must steer him swiftly straight from recognition of a problem to a purported drug "solution" without the intervention of some elementary and straightforward education about his condition and its solutions. Hence we have a very slick and persuasive marketing operation involving "health" websites that are fronts for the psycho-pharmacy’s marketing arm.
Sadly, far too many people are falling for this ploy and winding up in the hands of the psycho-pharmacy and the operation to drug the entire population gathers pace. The result is untold harm to the present and future of our nation and our race.
Anyone who wants to fight back in defence of sanity and decency can start by forwarding the truth to anyone and everyone likely to listen.
In the end, I think people will thank you.
The proliferation of websites promoting "free" questionnaires so that the unsuspecting public might furnish data that will help drugs corporations to sell them drugs and the case of Dr Mehmet Oz are two interrelated cases in point.
Let us take the online questionnaire issue first and cite an example: there is a website called RealAge, which appears to operate as a kind of front group or window for the pharmaceutical corporations. This relationship with the psycho-pharmacy is not made clear to visitors of the site who then fill in its questionnaire.
Corporate sponsors of RealAge include, surprise surprise, most of the major drug companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Genentech, Wyeth and many others. RealAge is essentially a marketing platform for Big Pharma and their most profitable pharmaceutical products such as Adderall, Ambien and Celebrex. It is disguised however to look like a consumer health information service.
The New York Times recently, and aptly, called RealAge "a window for drug makers" and said, "The test has received widespread publicity because of its affiliation with Dr. Mehmet Oz."
I’ll come to the famous - but I would imagine by now considerably discredited - Dr Oz in my next article.
For now, let us focus on how the Real Age website operates:
The RealAge website provides to its sponsors, the drugs corporations, information provided by its members and this information is then used by those corporations to solicit consumer sales using marketing messages targeted at publics by age, health condition, life issues and so on.
People who land on the site provide an e-mail address to take the RealAge online test. Throughout the test they are asked if they would like a "free RealAge membership". If someone answers "yes" to one of these prompts, they become "RealAge members," and the results of their test results are fed into a marketing database.
RealAge then allows its sponsors - the drug companies - to send e-mail messages based on those test results. In so doing it acts, as the, new York Times put it " as a clearinghouse for drug companies, including Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline," by allowing them to use its visitors’ test answers to formulate marketing messages based upon those answers from the test. The data can include, for instance, whether someone is taking antidepressants, or how sexually active they are and even whether their marriage is happy.
Now, I don’t know about you, but this approach strikes me as sneaky and less than honest.
Naturally, given that they come from corporations dedicated to peddling drugs, the "solutions" provided to whatever life difficulties are being targeted, always involve the person paying for and taking one or more drugs.
For most mental and physical situations there are solutions that do not involve drugging the person. This may not be very profitable for the drug peddlers who do not therefore want the public to know this, but it is nevertheless true.
To take one example: a person whose cholesterol levels are beginning to climb can usually solve this much more safely, cheaply and with good consequences for his or her overall health by straightforward dietary changes.
He does not have to of course. Possibly the statins present a "quick fix" on the order of kicking the TV set to adjust the picture, for which some might be willing to trade the side effects and their overall health but the person has a right to know at the very least that safe and very workable alternatives exist.
However, in order to extract money from that person’s wallet, the drugs peddlers must steer him swiftly straight from recognition of a problem to a purported drug "solution" without the intervention of some elementary and straightforward education about his condition and its solutions. Hence we have a very slick and persuasive marketing operation involving "health" websites that are fronts for the psycho-pharmacy’s marketing arm.
Sadly, far too many people are falling for this ploy and winding up in the hands of the psycho-pharmacy and the operation to drug the entire population gathers pace. The result is untold harm to the present and future of our nation and our race.
Anyone who wants to fight back in defence of sanity and decency can start by forwarding the truth to anyone and everyone likely to listen.
In the end, I think people will thank you.
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