Your Future Doctor, Sponsored by Cialis
So it is official - I can’t get off this subject. Maybe I’ve just had my head in the sand up to this point, but the Pharmaceutical Machine disturbs me to the core. Sure, the third most profitable industry in the world has to promote their “products” somehow. Nonetheless, we are not talking about Coke sponsoring the Olympics or Dick Vitale shilling for Hooters (how surreal is that?). These are decisions being made by professionals who have your life in their hands. They should not be influenced by anything but objective clinical studies - that is the bottom line. However, the August 11 issue of BusinessWeek knows this is not true.
Now it is bad enough that doctors are getting propaganda and eating dinner with pharma salespeople. What if your doctor was practically raised by Pfizer from the first day he or she stepped into medical school? OK I exaggerate a little. Here’s what happens in a nutshell: Big Pharma hires marketing middlemen to produce educational courses for physicians. Many of these courses are actually required for obtaining and/or retaining their licenses!
There are hundreds of these companies working with Big Pharma to design ad campaigns and hire doctors to influence classrooms - it is a $1.2billion industry. There are of course transparency issues, which is common in what is basically an unregulated niche of a huge industrial complex. Big Pharma and the middlemen say they they support a revised system, and Pfizer specifically is staking steps. That is to their credit.
It is interesting that the companies involved seemed shocked that this could be perceived as bias. Wow, that’s either flat-out lying or insane obliviousness. One example: a med student noticed that a multiple-choice question, one selection for treating schizophrenia was “prescribe paliperidone”. This chemical is best known by its brand name Invega, which is owned by Johnson and Johnson. Guess who was sponsoring the course?
In the Words of Mr. Big, I’m Addicted to that Rush
I fully intended on writing an article on how I got kicked out of a Oakland Athletics game last week as a participant in a friend’s bachelor party. Let’s just say the stereotype of the fuck-up future brother-in-law (relentlessly propagated by sitcoms over the years) is 100% accurate. Furthermore, alcohol was involved - but I guess that goes without saying. The groom in question, major-league shnockered at the time, is one of the six readers of this blog and is a modest man. Also, non-violently getting ejected from a sporting event is actually not as exciting as you might think. I’ll leave it at that.
Instead, I will direct my attention to one of my favorite (and much more popular) fucksticks, Mr. Rush Limbaugh. Maybe you read about his kick-ass new contract for (ahem) $38 million a year for the next eight effing years. Also, we can’t overlook his claim of a 9-figure signing bonus. That’s >$100 million, in case you were rubbing your eyes in amazement at the first figure and missed the second. Let’s crunch the numbers, assuming no vacation:
More money than a small, starving third-world country in order to basically lie through his teeth part-time.
This is not unheard of money - Howard Stern is getting paid more overall, $400 million vs. $500 million, and that shallow hack doesn’t deserve it either. But at least he is “entertainment”, and is promoted as such. Oh wait he has a “controversial” position on free speech - he is pro. Way to go out on a limb, Howard. Next you’ll tell us you’re against nun-beatings. The bottom line is, you can’t take him seriously. He’s like the horniest clown ever. On the other hand, there are millions of gullible listeners that hang on Rush’s every word. When he says Michael J. Fox is faking his Parkinson’s Disease symptoms, they may laugh nervously but then wonder if it’s true. When he says Republicans should vote for Hillary to drag out the primaries, this isn’t just Howard Stern telling two lesbians to french kiss. This is a extremely influential political figure commanding his 14 million viewers to cornhole America. Here is more great Rush insight. The only influence Howard Stern has is the ability to maybe give someone a boner. If Limbaugh has that influence over you, then welcome to CrazyTown you sick twist. If you are a woman, then I applaud your pathetically low standards. Please email me with your contact info.
The recent trend is to point fingers at bloggers and their debatable “disregard for truth and ethics”, but at least they aren’t getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars to tell their readers that the NAACP should have “riot rehearsals”. Maybe a more important point should be raised regarding the media known as radio. If Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern are the cornerstones of the industry, that may be a primary reason for its slow demise.
Weird List of Stuff
I stumbled across this today and figured that some of you might find these “facts” amusing. The one about celery is a myth, as I understand it. If not I should be eating nothing but celery for the next few weeks so I can fit into that thong.