It’s no secret that Big Pharma has been providing doctors with special perks in return for prescribing their products. This has been going on for ages. But to get a better grip on why the costs of healthcare have been increasing dramatically we need to understand about the massive networks that Big Pharma is involved in. Believe it or not, Big Pharma is connected to everything. The AMA, the FDA, the financial markets/big business, the insurance industry, law and politics; these are all affected by Big Pharma.

Recently it was reported that there are more Americans addicted to prescription drugs than illegal drugs. An article in The New York Times stated that “An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.” That’s a pretty hefty number. I know quite a few people who became addicted to prescription drugs. Some said tranquilizers and painkillers were harder to quit than illegal drugs. Prescription pain killers have become the “new heroin”, and are increasingly becoming a major problem in the school system.

Not only are the doctors getting “perks” from the drug companies, but the professors and the research facilities of major universities have been the recipient of “special benefits” as well. Recently “three influential psychiatrists from Harvard Medical School seem to have been caught with their hands in the drug-laced cookie jar, and now they’re in big trouble. Two days after it was alleged that the three doctors failed to report a collective $4.2 million in payments from pharmaceutical companies, Harvard and the affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have launched an investigation into the doctors’ behavior.” Big Pharma = Big Money.

Let me just state for the record that I think research and development in pharmaceuticals is an important factor in saving lives. Not all prescription drugs are addictive or deadly. Many are necessary to keep people alive. But let me also state that many side effects from certain drugs are not discovered until many years later. This can be a “Catch-22”. Also more money is spent on advertising than on R&D. In an article by Science Daily it was reported that “the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion.” Instead of prolonging or enhancing life, getting the word out about their products is of priority.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is proposing legislation for reporting any payments over $500 paid by pharmaceutical companies to doctors or academic research to be on public record. “If they are being paid, it ought to be reported,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley is also looking at the money drug companies pay doctors for academic research. He is investigating some 20 top medical schools - including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Cincinnati, for under-reporting the income top researchers are getting from the drug industry. Grassley wants to learn if the money is influencing research.”

I think transparency on this is issue is way overdue. When the absurd “war on illegal drugs” becomes part of a cover for the pharmaceutical companies’ desire to line their pockets, then something needs to be done.

(References: Discover Magazine-”Psychiatrists Who Hid Big Pharma Money Now Face Inquiry”, New York Times-”Legal Drugs Kill Far More Than Illegal”, Science Daily-”Big Pharma Spends More on Advertising Than Research and Development, Study Finds”, Weeks MD “Are Perks Compromising MD Ethics?”, The Providence Journal- “CVS Trial: Celona Tells of Becoming Point Man For CVS” , Campus Progress-” A New Kind Of Addiction”, Wired-”Prescription Drugs: Rock’s New Coke and Heroin?” and a h/t to Dr. Peter Rost’s Pharma Law Blog.)

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“The government is testing drugs with severe side effects like psychosis and suicidal behavior on hundreds of military veterans, using small cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found.

In one such experiment involving the controversial anti-smoking drug Chantix, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert its patients about severe mental side effects. The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police.”

(via Washington Times)

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“One of the other issues we’re going to be hearing a lot about in the next few months is the high cost of prescription drugs. Most of us can testify to the fact that drugs save lives. When I had heart surgery fourteen years ago, my own life was saved by a skilled surgical team, a caring wife, and some remarkable drugs. But drugs are costly -and it seems their price keeps rising. The sticker shock has sent many people -especially the elderly - across the border to Mexico and Canada in pursuit of affordable medicine.

And a report this week says that because of the cost, many middle class baby boomers are trying to do without. The pharmaceutical companies say you get what you pay for, they say it’s not cheap to develop new medicines. But in journalism as in medicine, it’s always helpful to get a second opinion. So if the cost of your daily meds leaves you feeling sad and depressed, unable to sleep or eat, I have a prescription for you - a consultation with the journalist Melody Petersen, who has written a powerful new book about what ails us.”

(via Bill Moyers Journal)

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The news that a couple of hospitals in the city will be closing hadn’t really surprised me. What did surprise me was the fact that these hospitals had an excellent reputation, and one had been in existence for 120 years. Another sign of the times? We all know that healthcare is big business. If major corporations are laying off people and/or shutting their doors, it makes sense that hospitals are feeling the crunch as well. Family and friends who work in healthcare have been telling me for years how overworked and understaffed they are. One who was going for her RN told me she stopped going to school because the doctors were so short and they had to give some of their work to the RNs and NPs. Her fear of making a critical mistake and getting sued eventually overruled her desire to help people.

Our healthcare system has been crumbling and in disrepair for many years now. When people lose access to emergency care, and their nearest hospital is 20 or 30 minutes away, you would think the crisis would be immediately addressed. The fact is that these hospital closings aren’t being addressed in the MSM much at all, and our elected officials seem to be putting the issue of healthcare off until the election is over. In the meantime more people will die because they don’t have insurance, or they got to the nearest hospital too late.

A horrible incident recently happened at a hospital in Egypt. There was a power outage, and the back-up generators didn’t work. Six people died because of it, and the hospital tried to cover it up. With the hospitals in the US experiencing financial difficulties, this could easily happen here.

(“Egypt:Doctors shoot video of blackout emergency” via Global Voices)

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“Cooing softly in baby talk, German Viasus gently uses a toothbrush to bathe the little animal he has raised since infancy and then pampers it with a fresh meal of mango, bananas and melon. The object of his affection? A beetle the size of a hamster with a hard, shiny shell and 2-inch-long horns.

Viasus, 36, is a Colombian entrepreneur who is exploiting the beetle-mania sweeping Japan by raising and exporting hundreds of the creepy-crawlies every month. He has become a fearless (in more ways than one) pioneer of Colombia’s somewhat belated effort to promote the legal exploitation of its biodiversity, a stunning variety of plant and animal species that is second only to Brazil’s.”

(via The Chicago Tribune)

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With the all the current heated debates going on about the links between vaccinations and autism, I found this film to be thought provoking. Let me state for the record that I am “neutral” on this issue. There are just too many conflicting factors to consider when looking at both sides. So, I’m posting a link to this film along with a site focused on articles defending vaccines. If nothing else, this film will make you THINK about some issues you may have not thought much about.

“This feature length documentary about medical madness, cloaked in bioterrorism preparedness, will awaken the brain dead. It exposes health officials, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for conducting a “War of Terror” that is killing millions of unwitting Americans.

[..] This monumental film exposes the agents and agencies behind: Hollywood films and the media creating a profitable culture of bioterror; the “War on Terrorism” used to control populations; the most lucrative war in history—the “War on Cancer;” the onslaught of dozens of new immunological diseases and deadly flus; the “War on AIDS” triggered by contaminated vaccines; the anthrax mailings resulting in restricted freedoms, and sales of toxic drugs, deadly vaccines, and more.”

(“In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood and Bioterrorism” via Google Video)

(Counter-argument: Concerned about Vaccines? site)

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“The following commentary about Borders — the US uber-bookstore — came from our good friend Alan Beatts, who, along with Jude Feldman, owns and operates Borderlands Books, a truly fine specialist bookstore in San Francisco. Extracted from his monthly newsletter, it’s kinda long, but it’s crucial information for all who read and write books, and will have a major impact on how the latter will sell their work to the former.”

“First off, a quick disclaimer — I don’t like Borders. I like them better than Barnes & Noble but still, like any independent bookseller, I don’t like them. Despite my intention to be as objective as possible in the article, I’m sure that my bias is going to creep in here and there. But, if you were looking for objective, dispassionate news, you wouldn’t be reading this I’m going to start with what has been going on with Borders over the past year, then I’m going to talk about the implications, and I’ll finish off with the reasons that it matters to everyone who loves books.”

(via Doc 40)

(Original article via Borderland Books Newsletter)

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“The people living in the Bay area of California are about to be sprayed with a new pesticide not registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a pre-emptive strike against a perceived threat from the Light Brown Apple Moth.

In August, the California Department of Food and Agriculture plans to spray pesticides in five Bay Area counties for the invasive species” (CBS 5, 2008). One of the chemicals being used is Checkmate, manufactured by Suterra, LLC, which is owned by Stewart Resnick, one of the richest men in California, and owner of the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world. Mr. Resnick is also included in California Governor Schwarzenegger’s top 100 donors. (Arnold Watch, 2008)

“Mr. Resnick has developed and owns a number of successful companies including Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world, which includes Paramount Citrus, Paramount Farming and Paramount Farms, growers, processors and marketers of citrus, almonds and pistachios; POM Wonderful, grower of pomegranates and maker of the all-natural POM Wonderful pomegranate juice; Teleflora, the largest floral wire service in the world; FIJI Water, the second largest imported bottled water in the United States and the newest member of the Roll family of companies; The Franklin Mint, a leader in high-quality collectibles; and Suterra, the largest biorational pest control company in the United States. (Political Friendster, 2006)”

The pesticide used to spray Santa Cruz last year was the same product, but without a new active ingredient. The new and improved Checkmate contains two active ingredients. It is this version that will be used on Bay Area residents.”

(via Freedom’s Phoenix)

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“Beyond the pure insanity of a nutty cult leader having the influence that Reverend Moon has, there are so many things so very wrong here I hardly know where to begin. But I’ll force myself to start with what’s been in the news recently. And I’ll do it briefly because, as I’ve said before, this topic has been discussed to death in the corporate media. And now that I think about it, it’s not that it’s been discussed so much, but how it’s been discussed, as an endless 20 second loop, that’s the problem.

If you go back as far as I do, ask yourself when the last time was, or if you don’t go back that far, ask yourself if you’ve ever, heard the Reverend Sun Myung Moon mentioned in the corporate media. I go back far enough to remember the John Belushi skit from the documentary when it first aired on Saturday Night Live. While Reverend Wright sound bites play on and endless loop in the corporate media, a man who has more political influence and is more dangerous than all the religious nut cases you can name combined, and I don’t include Wright in that group, is rarely, if ever brought up. In fact, he’s only been mentioned recently in the blogosphere from what I’ve seen, and I watch a lot of CNN and MSNBC. And while that might not be exhaustive coverage of what the media is reporting, googling his name for news stories on him finds only a handful. One by AlterNet, none by major media outlets.”

(via A Revolution of One)

(direct link to “King of America” on Veoh)

(Related: “Who is Rev. Moon?”)

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Kevin Annett is a former United Church minister in Vancouver, Canada, who was fired without cause in 1995, and then expelled from the same church without due process, after he had unearthed evidence of the theft of native land by church officers, and of the murder of native children at the United Church residential school in Port Alberni, British Columbia, where Kevin ministered.

Since his firing and blacklisting by the United Church, Reverend Annett has worked as an advocate and counsellor in aboriginal healing circles on the west coast. He organized the first international Tribunal into Canadian residential schools in Vancouver in June, 1998, at which a United Nations affiliate, IHRAAM, presided.

Reverend Annett is working with aboriginal and human rights groups around the world in an effort to bring charges of complicity in Genocide against the government of Canada, the Anglican, United and Roman Catholic churches, and the RCMP. He is serving as the secretary of the recently-established Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada, has authored a book about his experiences, “Love and Death in the Valley”, and co-produced the documentary “Unrepentent” about the church’s coverup in the genocide of 50,000 Native Americans.

“John LeKay: When you first arrived at your new parish and were invited to conduct a wedding ceremony at the native reserve; you asked a native man by the name of Danny Gus - why there were no natives showing up for mass on Sunday. He turned around and said “because they killed my friend, he is buried up in the hills behind the church”. What was your initial reaction when you heard this?

Kevin Annett: Disbelief. I wanted proof but didn’t know where to look for it.”

(via Heyoka Magazine)

(Related: the documentary “Unrepentant” via Google video. Hidden From History website. Hidden From History: The Canadian Holocaust)

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“Ever since she knew about the devastating effects of radiation and depleted uranium pollution on the world as a result of nuclear weapons, geoscientist Leuren Moret has been on a crusade to stop wars and weapons testing. The War Crimes Conference and Exhibition held at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur recently was eye-opening and conscience-raising in its condemnation of the atrocities of war. During the three-day event, attendees gained insight into the horrors of past conflicts and the impending threat to our future if wars continue. Among the many impassioned pledges was a move to establish a War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia this year and try U.S. President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard for their roles in initiating the illegal Iraq war.

The Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War is a global movement introduced several years ago by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia. The February War Crimes Conference is the most recent of the annual events organized by the Perdana Global Peace Forum. The event fielded distinguished speakers who shared their expertise and showcased a number of war victims from Iraq and Palestine who gave a human face to the grim discourse with their heartrending testimonies.

Among the eloquent speakers was geoscientist and international radiation specialist Leuren Moret, who gave a startling revelation about the effects of radiation and how our global environment has been contaminated from atomic bomb testing since 1945 to the present, and how this pollution has sharply increased since the U.S. introduced depleted uranium (DU) weapons to the battlefields for the first time with the 1991 Persian Gulf War. This, she says, has caused a world epidemic of cancer, diabetes, neuro-muscular diseases, chronic fatigue syndrome, diseases of the heart and brain and infertility.

A U.S. nuclear weapons lab whistle blower, Moret has spoken in 46 countries as she feels it is her obligation to share the devastating results of her research, which she began after working at two nuclear weapons laboratories in California from the 1970s to 1991. What she has to say will not only shock, but also answer the question we have always asked: why are so many people suffering from cancer and unexplained diseases of the heart, brain and nervous system these days?”

(via Heyoka Magazine)

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[..] “One chilly Tuesday evening, strange things were afoot on Capitol Hill. The U.S. Senate was hosting a ceremony at the request of a wealthy, elderly newspaper publisher who wanted official recognition as a majestic, divine visitor to Washington. The Dirksen Senate Office Building made for an unlikely temple: a formidable seven-story block of white marble, looming on a street corner diagonally across from the Capitol Dome, its marble pediment is inscribed, “THE SENATE IS THE LIVING SYMBOL OF OUR UNION OF STATES.”

On March 23, 2004, U.S. lawmakers were filmed here in a conference room, paying tribute to the enigmatic Reverend Sun Myung Moon, then eighty-four, and his wife, Hak Ja, sixty-four. As the cameras rolled, two congressmen presented the Koreans with matching royal costumes. Wearing the burgundy robes and shining crowns, which crested into jagged golden pinnacles, the married couple smiled and waved for the cameras.

Who was this self-proclaimed monarch? In the 1970s, the evening news had presented Moon, the ranting, middle-aged business tycoon who wore flowing robes on special occasions, as Korea’s answer to L. Ron Hubbard, someone for college students to avoid, luring thousands of young Americans into a cult in which they sold carnations on the street and married spouses he chose for them. But the media had moved on to other nightmares, leaving Moon, forgotten, to reinvent himself. Now time had wizened him into an elderly patriarch, wearing an ashen face for his coronation. An orange Senate VIP name tag remained pinned to his gray suit, peeking out from between rows of curly gold filigree, as he stood on stage at the head of a red carpet.”

(via Alternet)

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“A word of warning to those who believe in lucky numbers, auspicious colors and star-crossed dates: Beware. The Ides of March are upon us. Only those familiar with history or William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” readily may recognize the reference to March 15, the day of Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C. The Roman calendar designated monthly Ides, or midpoint, days that fell either on the 13th or 15th day, depending on the month.

After Caesar’s untimely exit, superstitious Romans well may have avoided launching a business, marriage or other important venture on a date so cloaked in doom it eventually entered the lexicon as a metaphor for impending catastrophe. Despite vast advances in knowledge and technology over the last 2,000 years, it turns out people today aren’t so different from the ancients when it comes to superstition and the way it affects decision-making and the economy, according to new research.”

(via The Chicago Tribune)

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“A pilot project in social networking, which involves wirelessly monitoring people in a closed environment, will commence in March, 2008 at the University of Washington’s computer science building. The RFID Ecosystem project will provide long-term, in-depth research of user-centered RFID systems in relation to fields such as society and technology. Volunteers will wear electronic tags on their clothing and belongings, enabling RFID readers to monitor their whereabouts. One of the main questions this research faces is whether or not the utility aspect of this monitoring system outweighs the participants’ potential loss of privacy, and how can this loss of privacy be minimized?”

(via The Future of Things)

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“Internet goliath Google has discontinued listing stories from Inner City Press, a United Nations-focused media organization, through its Google News program. The move comes after an Inner City Press staffer reportedly questioned Google regarding its failure to sign a human rights and anti-censorship agreement. Inner City Press is the most effective and important media organization for UN whistleblowers, according to Bea Edwards, International Program director of the Government Accountability Project.

Inner City Press has been an accredited news organization at the United Nations since December 2005 and has been listed on Google News search results for over two years. It is also accredited, according to its web site, at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and Federal Communications Commission, among other government agencies. Inner City Press has covered disclosures of whistleblowers in the UNDP office in North Korea, in the UN ‘House’ in Ankara, Turkey, in the group monitoring progress toward the Millennium Development Goals at Headquarters, and in a UNDP climate change project in West Africa, among others. Over the course of the past year, as management at the United Nations has stepped back from providing whistleblowers with protection from retaliation, Inner City Press has reported the arcane tactics of silencing the free speech of employees of conscience in the UN system.”

(via GAP)

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“Governments have more or less caught up with what in geek-speak is called “web 1.0”, with the online world largely mimicking the offline world. E-mails replace letters; websites make publishing speedier and more effective; data are stored on the user’s computer. A collection of programs, paid-for or pirated, are the essential tools for getting going.

But all this has been overtaken by “web 2.0”, shorthand for the interactivity brought by wikis (pages that anyone can edit) and blogs (on which anyone can comment). Data are accessed through the internet; programs are opened in browser windows rather than loaded from the hard disc; instant messages, often attached to social-networking sites such as Facebook, replace e-mail. Web 2.0 also means free video-sharing on sites such as YouTube and free phone calls between computers. These developments allow information to be shared far more effectively, at almost no cost. That gives great hope to the proponents of e-democracy.”

(via The Economist)

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“Navajo tribal members who believe their voices are needed in the fight against the proposed Desert Rock Power Plant their government supports claim a host of alternatives to burning coal exist on the Navajo Nation. The group, called Diné CARE, holds a viewpoint that is squarely opposite of Desert Rock supporters, such as project spokesman Frank Maisano, of the Washington, D.C., law firm Bracewell & Giuliani LLC.

“It’s a Navajo project and the Navajo are choosing to take part of their vast resources, which include coal, and advance the cause of their people,” Maisano said. “The plant will generate $50 million in revenue per year, bring thousands of construction jobs, 400 permanent jobs and a wealth of indirect benefits.” The massive project, however, is held up in the federal permitting process. Project developers hope to begin construction sometime this year near Burnham in San Juan County.

Diné CARE’s recent release of a report stating its views about the Desert Rock Power Plant project preceded by less than two weeks letters from Navajo President Joe Shirley, Jr. and the Bracewell & Giuliani firm notifying the Environmental Protection Agency of the tribe’s intent to sue to force EPA’s release of its Prevention of Significant Deterioration (air) permit. Desert Rock organizers submitted its air permit application to the EPA in May 2004. A draft permit was issued in August 2006, followed by a series of public meetings and hearings. EPA officials are still evaluating and responding to concerns from comments received at those meetings.”

(via The Farmington Daily Times)

(Related: Interview with Dr. Gregory Cajete, author of “Native Science”, and his article “A Contemporary Pathway For Ecological Vision”)

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What Don’t We Know About the Pharmaceutical Industry? A Freakonomics Quorum

[W]e’ve gathered up some willing and able candidates — Dr. Stuart Apfel, Zola P. Horovitz, Dr. Harlan Krumholz, Ray Moynihan, and Dr. Cyril Wolf — and asked them the following question:

What’s something that most people don’t know, pro or con, about the pharmaceutical business, whether from an R&D, economic, or political perspective?

Dr. Harlan Krumholz, professor of medicine, epidemiology, and public health at Yale:

Science and the public good in a capitalist society depend on the free flow of unbiased information, but it doesn’t always work that way. Events are revealing that many pharmaceutical companies, along with their consulting academic physicians, have engaged in practices that obscure or misrepresent information about their products. Does the public realize the depth of these practices, and their implications for patient care?

Zola P. Horovitz, Ph.D, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry consultant, and member of the board of drug companies including Biocryst Pharmaceuticals, Phyton, Genaera Corporation, and Avigen:

My answer to this question is this: that the United States is subsidizing prescription drug prices for the rest of the world. Most people do not realize that when a prescription is paid for in the U.S., the payer (the patient, his or her insurance company, or the government) is subsidizing the cost of that same prescription in most countries outside the U.S. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies price their products to get a return that will support research and development to discover new products. Almost all major new drugs are discovered and developed by these companies, and most are located inside the U.S.

Dr. Cyril Wolf, practicing physician and prescription sales researcher:

The best kept secret by the retail pharmaceutical industry is the obscene profits made on generic drugs by the large chain stores. Whereas brand name drugs are all purchased, and therefore sold, for around the same price, generics are obtained for a fraction of that cost. The price at which the generics are sold is determined by the sellers, who thus have the ability to make exorbitant profits on these drugs.

Dr. Stuart Apfel, founder and president of Parallax Clinical Research and chief medical officer at Elite Pharmaceuticals:

For the majority of people, the great appeal of biomedical science is the potential benefit it presents to human beings through curing disease, extending life, and improving the quality of life. As is generally well-known, biomedical science has achieved much in extending our knowledge of the complex biological processes that make up all living organisms, including ourselves. […]

Market forces will always drive the actions of pharmaceutical companies, which are, after all, businesses like any other. However, society as a whole will benefit from greater risk taking and increased efforts to bridge the divide between laboratory science and the clinic.

Ray Moynihan, co-author of Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients:

What a lot of people may not know is that for some time now, pharmaceutical company marketing strategies have focused on promoting illness, rather than simply promoting drugs. Underpinning many of the marketing strategies of big drug companies is a very sophisticated and comprehensive plan to widen the boundaries of illness, and create an environment in which more and more formerly healthy people are defined as “sick.” The strategies have many components — the most visible being TV and newspaper ads that make us think that our ailments and inconveniences are the signs and symptoms of genuine medical conditions. A sore stomach is “Irritable Bowel Syndrome,” a mild sexual difficulty is “Female Sexual Dysfunction,” and overactive grown-ups now have “Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.”

FOR THE FULL ANSWERS READ THE ARTICLE

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Bill Moyers interviews New York Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston who says America’s system has been rigged to benefit the super-rich.

WATCH AT THE PBS SITE

Ties into this whole shtick about the U.S. of A. going bankrupt.

Awesome: “We used to put people to death five hundreds years ago for lending money to charge interest.”

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While this is an interesting and short read, worth its perusal, I found this little snippet quite interesting about possible solutions to help the U.S. out of its sinking situation. I’m interested in the first point, but like I said, the whole thing is worth reading:

We might possibly be saved, he explains, if the nation engages in massive, radical reform in three areas: 1) Eliminating the current income tax system and moving to a national retail sales tax of 33 percent. 2) Privatizing social security so that workers own their savings accounts and the federal government can no longer swipe funds from Social Security. 3) Launching a national health insurance program that covers everyone and relies on a system of government-issued vouchers that citizens can spend with health insurance companies.

Full article via NewsTarget, by Mike Adams

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From io9:

Inflated prices trigger the pleasure centers in your brain more than fair ones. Not only is the idea of buying something expensive more exciting than buying something on sale, but you’ll actually get more genuine pleasure out of something expensive — even if it’s not worth the cost. A group of social scientists at CalTech and Stanford discovered this not-entirely-unexpected fact when they stuck people into MRI brain scanners and gave them several glasses of wine, assigning each one a random price.

In point of fact, all the wines were exactly the same. But the results of the MRI scans showed greater neurological activity in people’s pleasure centers when they were told they were drinking expensive wine. The best (creepiest?) part of all this is that the authors of the study hope to use these findings to manipulate consumers. The authors write:

Our results show that increasing the price of a wine increases subjective reports of flavor pleasantness as well as blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area that is widely thought to encode for experienced pleasantness during experiential tasks. The paper provides evidence for the ability of marketing actions to modulate neural correlates of experienced pleasantness and for the mechanisms through which the effect operates.

Yes, marketing can modulate your neurological system. You already knew that, but somehow finding out that there’s an objective truth to it in a brain scanner makes it feel more like Big Brother than Brooks Brothers.

Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness

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And what about the wrongly accused? Putting all the “Big Brother”, conspiracy theories aside for a moment; they’ve discovered that implanting the VeriChip causes serious side effects. We don’t have any idea to what will come with long term use. So the act of implanting this in prisoners, is criminal in itself.

“Ministers are planning to implant “machine-readable” microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme that would create more space in British jails. Amid concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals. But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, as long as two grains of rice, are able to carry scanable personal information about individuals, including their identities, address and offending record.

The tags, labelled “spychips” by privacy campaigners, are already used around the world to keep track of dogs, cats, cattle and airport luggage, but there is no record of the technology being used to monitor offenders in the community. The chips are also being considered as a method of helping to keep order within prisons. A senior Ministry of Justice official last night confirmed that the department hoped to go even further, by extending the geographical range of the internal chips through a link-up with satellite-tracking similar to the system used to trace stolen vehicles. “All the options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue,” the source added.”

(via The Independent)

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“On the heels of the RIAA’s recent decision to criminalize consumers who rip songs from albums they’ve purchased to their computers (or iPods), the association has now gone one step further and declared that “remembering songs” using your brain is criminal copyright infringement. “The brain is a recording device,” explained RIAA president Cary Sherman. “The act of listening is an unauthorized act of copying music to that recording device, and the act of recalling or remembering a song is unauthorized playback.” The RIAA also said it would begin sending letters to tens of millions of consumers thought to be illegally remembering songs, threatening them with lawsuits if they don’t settle with the RIAA by paying monetary damages. “We will aggressively pursue all copyright infringment in order to protect our industry,” said Sherman.

In order to avoid engaging in unauthorized copyright infringement, consumers will now be required to immediately forget everything they’ve just heard — a skill already mastered by U.S. President George Bush. To aid in these memory wiping efforts, the RIAA is teaming up with Big Pharma to include free psychotropic prescription drugs with the purchase of new music albums. Consumers are advised to swallow the pills before listening to the music. The pills — similar to the amphetamines now prescribed for ADHD — block normal cognitive function, allowing consumers to enjoy the music in a more detached state without the risk of accidentally remembering any songs (and thereby violating copyright law).”

(via NewsTarget)

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This is downright creepy:

“A just-published Microsoft patent application for Monitoring Group Activities describes how a company or the government can determine if employees are not meeting their project deadlines through the use of detection components comprised of ‘one or more physiological or environmental sensors to detect at least one of heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement, facial movements, facial expressions, and blood pressure.’ Yikes.”

(via Techdirt)

(patent application for Monitoring Group Activities)

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“If there’s only one thing you’ll remember from 2007, it will be Britney Spears’ meltdown. But if there are two things you remember, it will be Britney and the thousands of data breaches that were reported in 2007, right? Right? Well, it’s what we’ll remember, and since we don’t necessarily do celeb gossip (unless you’ve got a good security angle…) we decided to offer up a review of the best and worst of Disclosure ’07.

Each breach gets rated on our nifty, unscientific “Class-Action Outrage Scale,” judging the likelihood that ambulance-chasing lawyers could have a field day. Look out Monster.com: We estimate nine of 10 lawyers are outraged on behalf of your 1.3 million victims. Our “D’oh! Factor” (thank you, Homer Simpson) reflects just how egregious and goofy the breach was. Take a look at how Swedish Urology Group earned itself five out of five Homers. Ick. Some breaches on our list are serious. Some are funny. And some are just plain sad. But all of them were probably preventable. Alas.”

(via CSO)

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