The Brockovich Report

A lawfirm advertises a medical brochure about Mesothelioma. On Television.

A news broadcast announces that many Lipitor patients experience memory loss. (Why would this be surprising? Statins reduce cholesterol and the brain relies on cholesterol to function. )

Some Avandia patients won't take their medication. Some Avandia patients have an increased risk of heart attack. Some people take Avandia and have heart attacks. Some of them die. Some of them didn't have to.

Every day for us, it's an information war out there. A war between information and disinformation; between fact and fear; between supposition and position; it's a war of possibilities.

I think sometimes it is important to remember that opinions and belief can be irrelevant. Think of it for a moment. If you believe the world is square, does it matter? The world is round (technically an oblate spheroid—a rounded shape with a bulge around the equator) no matter what you believe. And round or square or cubic zirconium, we're not going to fall off of it. The truth--or the untruth--of a claim does not rest in belief. It rests in fact. Hopefully we may discover the truth if we investigate it; but we above all should maintain the right to our own voices. In spite of what we believe, there is a tangible truth out there. Just...it may not be a universal truth and sometimes--like those folks on the other side of the earth who do not fall off--the consequences of the truth and all its facets are counterintuitive.

What is the point to all of this philosophizing?

There is more than one perspective out there. There are as many perspectives as there are people--maybe even more, since some people are open-minded enough to see more than one point of view. And that is all right, because we have freedom of speech, and we have first amendment rights.

And because we have freedom of speech and first amendment rights, internet advertising should reflect that. Curtailing attorneys from internet advertising is a violation of freedom of speech and first amendment rights.

Business would have us all be a world of robots, taking their commands, buying their products, buying their bull.

In particular, I'm responding to articles like this one One problem in this article is that a single spurious assumption can ruin a study; and studies can be slanted to seem to say nearly anything. And there's a straw dog in that article, a false premise. They claim drug litigation is about trial lawyer profits. When it comes down to it, drug litigation is not about trial lawyer profits. Drug litigation is about empowering the tiny voice of the consumer against the fat cats of industry. Victims have a right to be heard. Victims have a right to have "megaphones" so their voice can be heard; and trial lawyers are the personification of megaphones. Articles like the link I just posted seem to be holding up the voice of reason, but they are not. They are trying to quell rights, and what is more shameful than that, especially in a free and ethical society?

Remember in the Wizard of Oz, how Dorothy announced herself? "I am Dorothy, the small and meek."

Come on people and take off the blinders! It is no coincidence that thousands on Avandia now have heart attacks. Don't they have a right to be more than a petulant Dorothy trembling--and dying--at the feet of the Great and Powerful pharmaceutical companies?

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We live in a country that proudly announces we have freedom of speech and free enterprise. Certainly at it's zenith, these freedoms can produce the most sublime art. At the other end of the spectrum we find night-time television flooded with infomercials, and daytime television flooded with commercials that tweak the imagination and regularly imply more utopian product satisfaction than any materialistic thing could realistically deliver. We live in a society where radio ads tease us; newspaper clipper coupons lure us to shop here or there, and full color magazine ads tantalize us into buying expensive brand name products simply for the prestige of wearing the label, even if it is only to the nearest Walmart, Publix, Costco, Kroger or 7/11.

Is it any wonder that the internet abounds with a plethora of advertisement? It's important to remember any time you go on the internet, especially if you're looking for "truth, justice and the American way," you always have to do something that your great great great horse-trading grandfather would have advised you to do.

"Consider the source."

Someone showed me this Washington Times article with the following quote:

"Because for every noble, heartstring-pulling Erin Brockovich fantasy, there are countless real-life personal-injury lawyers who erode public confidence in our civil justice system, undermine America's economic competitiveness and contribute to health care inflation with frequently meritless lawsuits."

First, I'd like to say that there are personal injury lawyers out there in the world because there are people who get injured due to negligence of one kind or another, and they need someone to advocate for them. That said, their worst internet advertising is probably no worse than nighttime infomercials; and one's experience with them is bound to be not far off from one's experience with nighttime infomercials too. Remember that night you stayed up late and after thirty minutes of tele-shopper-hypnotism, ended up purchasing some get rich quick real estate program; or some make a million building websites program; or some extreme diet or exercise plan; or some peculiar kitchen device that looked really amazing in the tele demonstration, but is going to spend the next seventeen years gathering dust in your appliance garage. Hopefully the worst thing that can happen is a brief waste of time, or coming out of the experience like Marion the Librarian, sadder but wiser.

Accessibility of information is one of the great benefits of our age; of course it is a shame thee is so much useless rubbish to sort thru. There are always going to be best case scenarios and worst case scenarios. But somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous, amid that topography of internet verbiage is the path for a victim to find just recourse. And I wonder--is that such a very bad thing?

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There are Unidentified Flying Objects. There are Unidentified Submarine Objects. Now there are Unidentified Cutaneous Objects. (For those of us without an MD, and even for those WITH an MD, cutaneous means relating to or existing on or affecting the skin.) These "UCO" are classified officially as Delusional Parasitosis since the Center for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't know what they are, or even IF they are. And of course, what they don't know about must be delusional.

I suppose whenever humankind faces something new, it is a throwback to the day when we believed we lived in a geocentric universe in which the sun and everything else revolved around us, and everyone who was anyone said the world was flat. Just like those long ago days, now they're all having a whopping case of denial. And I'm not talking about that river in Egypt. I'm talking about Morgellons syndrome. It IS denial when a scientist won't even look at the problem. Not investigating. . . that is not scientific method.

Maybe it is a scary thing when we have to admit there's something new out there in the big bad world. After all, we humans are creatures of habit. Most of us would like to be able to take a snapshot of things and be able to relax and say "This is how it is." But the world keeps turning. We keep discovering new things about our old world. Our body of knowledge keeps on growing, in spite of denial. Things grow. Things change, even if we say they don't.

You'd think a researcher would be thrilled to find something new. But they (the official powers that be) spent years denying the existence of Morgellons syndrome. It is a debilitating condition which wears down those afflicted by it, a condition which is characterized by itching skin, the sensation of crawling or biting on or below the skin, skin lesions, and weird fibers that grow below the skin.

In fact, experts don't agree on anything about this condition. Is it a single parasite? Are there misdiagnoses in addition to legitimate cases? Is Morgellons a collection of other conditions mislabeled and lumped into a single category? Is the syndrome imaginary? Is it a mental illness?

For now, it is classified as an Unexplained Dermopathy; at least it's been acknowledged to the point of being investigated in epidemiological studies by the CDC. For the past few years, sufferers have had http://www.morgellons.org/ which is working toward getting more money for more research centers. Because of Morgellons Org., there are some legitimate researchers getting involved: Oklahoma State University, California State University – Hayward, State University of NY – Stonybrook, a microbiologist at Clongen Laboratories, and possibly others.

So, how is the research going? Some scientists think that the fibers are consistent with substances created by the body. They've discovered half of the people they've investigated who have symptoms of Morgellons also have Lyme disease. At least they're looking at the problem. There may not yet be a light at the end of the tunnel, but at least they're admitting there is a tunnel, and not declaring it hysterical spelunker syndrome.

Links
On Wikipedia
Morgellons Research Foundation
Study seeks clues on skin-crawling Morgellons

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