“YouTube Gives Straight Dope On Big Pharma”

Whatever YouTube was worth in dollars to Google, multiply that value by the earnestness with which the public is using the site to create their own expository media. AdAge calls them "budding Michael Moores."

If your politics don’t allow for Michael Moore love, choose a documentarian you can sink your teeth into.

It’s exciting enough to see the realization of the Citizen Press, which is in the end YouTube’s and the blogosphere’s greatest gift to the public, but it is dizzying to think that pharmaceutical companies, those Goliaths, are worried about little ol’ me and you, and the damage we can inflict with a keyboard and digital camera.

Rich Thomaselli says the FDA and Congress aren’t as frightening as YouTube – most likely because there is no lobby outside the halls of a website, no fine dining or dinner jackets, no trips to hot spring resorts.

Better, with YouTube, you can upload your message and wait for light bulbs without having to go through the gated media community with its own agendas and entangling alliances. Your message – so long as it doesn’t interfere with the RIAA, it would seem – is broadcast loud and clear.

And now, former pharmaceutical sales representatives are returning spoonfuls of medicine, sans the sugar, to their previous employers via video messages on YouTube. This Eli Lilly rep, for example, notes part of his job description:

"We were instructed by our camps to downplay those side effects and to focus on the efficacies of the drug."

The drug he speaks of in this confession is Zyprexa, which was causing a large number of patients to "blimp up," possibly increasing instances of diabetes.   

Of course, what can be used for good can also be used for…well, counter-arguments. Nothing bars Big Pharma from producing their own positively spun messages on YouTube as well.

And they’ve got a nice budget for video advertising, thanks to Congress allowing TV ads at this millennium’s start, and thanks to doctors and you and me for paying the pusher what he wants at the pick-up counter. We’re paying for their advertising – nice of us, isn’t it?
  
  

Security company Sophos’ senior technology consultant Graham Cluely blamed the problem on hijacked websites being exploited by spammers. But Michael Brown, president of HealthPricer.com, says it’s lack of policing that’s to blame.

"The Internet really is the Wild West," he said in an interview with WebProNews. "If you did a search on Viagra, I’ll be you’d find at least 50% that were illegal."

Brown’s estimation matches the Canadian Pharmacist’s Association’s revelation that up to 50% of the drugs bought on the Internet come from online pharmacies that can be counterfeit or substandard.

Adding to the problem, says Brown, are second tier comparison shopping engines like eBay’s Shopping.com, BizRate, Shopzilla, TheFind.com, and Comparison.com. These sites are powered by feed submissions from retailers who also buy sponsored links.

A Viagra search on Shopping.com, for example, brings up (pun not intended) three hits for generic Viagra. "That’s illegal," says Brown, noting that the sale of generic Viagra is against the law in the US.

Brown believes the comparison shopping sites aren’t selling bogus pills purposefully. It may be they aren’t policing well enough, putting them at risk of being perceived as participating in illegal practices. 

With 80% of American Internet users, or 113 million adults, searching for health-related information (comScore), there’s a lot of room for false perceptions. Buying prescription medicine online is rarer than information-seeking though, with online drug sales only making up 1% of $250 billion American prescription market.

Brown takes the opportunity to tout his own company, HealthPricer.com, a site that requires all merchants to have a brick-and-mortar presence, accreditation, and to be a licensed pharmacy with a pharmacist on staff.

"A merchant will contact us and the first thing we’ll do is we’ll go through their website, not with a spider, but personally, to make sure its structured in a way that’s easy for the consumer to use. [We look at] their license, their shipping policy, [the safety of] the transaction process, and their customer service policy."

That’s more, he says than Google or Yahoo do, whom Brown criticizes for having too open an application process for pharmaceutical sales and advertising. "The consumer thinks that Google endorses the seller, but it was a spider. Google and others don’t know it’s going on. They have no way to police."

Google, at least, disagrees with that statement. Google spokesperson Michael Mayzel told WebProNews that Google has a longstanding policy regarding advertising prescription drugs, and also requires third-party verification.

Mayzel cites Google’s AdWords content policy:

Pharmacies advertising prescription drugs or using prescription drug keywords may only target the U.S. or Canada, and must be PharmacyChecker approved. Ads will not run until a valid PharmacyChecker identification number is provided. AdWords only accepts advertising from pharmacies that are based in the U.S. or Canada.

Google’s AdWords policing also came under fire this week after malicious code found its way into Google’s sponsored links. Our David Utter reported on this topic earlier. Mayzel says, in both instances, Google works hard to enforce its policies.

"We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware to our users both in our ad network and in our search results," he said. 

"We have manual and automatic processes in place to detect and enforce these policies.  In short, we take this issue very seriously.  We also encourage our advertisers to contact Google directly if they have concerns or detect suspicious malware.  Lastly, we encourage users to educate themselves on preventive measures to keep safe."

The ad is covered in a thick layer of irony, informing its target market that the Times is the "ultimate guide to global travel," advising on:

Where to Stay; Where to Eat; What to Do; When to Go

It appeared above an article posted on the travel section of GridSkipper.com, a Gawker Media site. The article was titled "New York Coke Bars."

If you’re the temperance-minded, you may already be wondering what’s wrong with Coca-Cola, or the soda-jerk joints that serve it. That association would be quickly displaced upon seeing the graphic accompanying the article featuring a mirror with a powder line and a rolled-up dollar bill. 

It becomes clear this is a guide to "some of the city’s favorite indoor skiing," sponsored by the New York Times. And if you, the cokehead reader, know any blow-friendly bars that Amanda Kludt, the writer of the piece, forgot to mention, be sure to let GridSkipper know.

Just make sure it hasn’t been mentioned in the comments section. Commentator "Wasp vs. Stryper" was appalled at the list’s incompleteness, reminding Kludt of The Annex, The Dark Room, 200 Orchard, 205, The Box, and Thor, all of which can be expected to be raided next week.

Regardless of the ironic hilarity of it, it seems doubtful that the NYT would openly endorse public cocaine use – unless there’s an editorial I’ve missed. The Village Voice, maybe, High Times, but the NY Times, established paper of record for the greatest city on Earth and most widely-respected news organization anywhere?

Though contextual advertising is most definitely the future in this industry, and a huge organization like the Times can absorb accidental associations, smaller, more sensitive advertisers would probably be quite upset having their priceless brand names associated with the urban nightclub drug subculture.

So, needless to say, but it’s going to be said anyway, artificial intelligence has a ways to go yet before it can recognize certain moral and cultural nuances with enough skill to choose which ads are appropriate. Google says they’ve gotten quite good at this.

Doubleclick, the digital advertiser the NYT went through for this placement, apparently has some problem solving to address – even if artificial intelligence is really, really hard. 

Fortinet described how a phishing site called Pharmacy Express has a couple of illicit connections to Google. First, their spam includes a link that appears to go to Blogspot, which is Google’s domain for blogs hosted on the blogger service.

They also noted another trick used by the criminals behind Pharmacy Express:

The site is able to bypass a few automated malicious Web analysis tools by inserting “Google.com” as a keyword in its HTML search code. It also downloads a 1×1 pixel image to track the browser information, such as, IP address, browser type and version, etc. While the Pharmacy Express site is hosted in China, the 1×1 pixel image is hosted on a site registered in the United States.

Also, Fortinet found an actual Blogger site loaded with malicious code. The site, created to look like a Honda CR450 enthusiast page, delivers a Trojan to visitors. Fortinet also discovered topics like Star Wars and girlfriends linked to other Blogger sites hosting malicious code.

Scripts for a mass mailing variant of the Stration worm have been found to be responsible for churning out emails that send people to these hostile sites. Deleting suspicious messages will help reduce one’s chance of ending up with an infected system.

Don’t Buy Replica Watches From Spammers: The guy with the overcoat loaded with ‘discounted’ Rolexes, Hermes, Cartier, and other luxury brand watches has moved his scams to the web; the destination of his overcoat is unknown and probably best left unexplored.

Kelly Conley at Symantec described how replica watch spam has been hitting inboxes in very high volumes. Conley noted how a hijack attempt used by the spammer accompanies these junk messages:

The body is often a legitimate-looking message such as a newsletter, which (at the end or beginning) contains a URL to a Web site selling replica watches. The headers look like spam with the "from" and/or "subject" lines consisting of spam content. This should be a flag that lets the end user know that the message contained within is spam.

In a complete coincidence, I received one of these spams just after submitting this article. People can do themselves a favor by not giving these spammers the time of day.

Cory Doctorow blogged on BoingBoing about a project initiated at the Federation of American Scientists. Michael Stebbins serves as the FAS directory of biology policy; he has also authored Sex Drugs and DNA: Sciences Taboos Confronted.

Stebbins told Doctorow of the work performed by Stebbins’ summer intern at FAS, Emily Hesaltine, who produced a revised version of Ready.gov in two months. The new site, ReallyReady.org, does away with a number of perceived failings of the government website.

Those failings have been described at length in an analysis posted at FAS. Some DHS material was too generic, too wordy, or overly repetitive in its presentation. Hesaltine identified several areas of Ready.gov that needed an update, including pages for disabled and special needs people, nuclear threats, and influenza pandemics.

A site update at Ready.gov announced by DHS did not impress Stebbins at all:

Stebbins found some good to DHS’ update, but not nearly enough to address the issues that Hesaltine fixed with ReallyReady.org:

And speaking of colors, Ready.gov does not display the color-coded Threat Advisory on the risk of terrorist attacks that DHS.gov has on its site. That seemed like an odd omission to Stebbins, especially with “National Preparedness Month” coming up in September.

Oh, and Ready.gov was built with taxpayer money covering the expenses.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

This led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to look into this and carefully examine the warning labels that came on these products.

After this examination, the FDA has now ordered the makers of these products (Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly & Company) to include new warnings about potential vision loss. According to Reuters,

The new label said such vision loss, known as nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, “has been reported rarely.” Thirty-eight cases of vision loss among Viagra users had been reported to the F.D.A. as of May 27.

The label also tells doctors to discontinue the medication “and seek medical attention in the event of a sudden loss of vision in one or both eyes.”

The vision problem is called NAION for short, and there are between 1,000 and 6,000 cases reported in America every year. The FDA admits that there is no proof that the impotence drugs themselves are responsible for any cases, but seems to be taking a precautionary stance by ordering the new warning labels.

“We have not established that this is a cause-and-effect relationship. We’re not sure we can establish it as the cause, because this is a population with other problems. If and when we get other reports, based on media interest, we will continue to evaluate and monitor the report. That’s what we do for every drug,” said FDA spokeswoman Susan Cruzan.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

The particular form of blindness, non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), is caused by lack of blood flow to the optic nerve and is most common in the elderly, especially among those suffering from diabetes or high blood pressure. The condition affects an estimated 1,000 to 6,000 Americans a year.

After 38 Viagra users reported sudden vision impairment soon after taking the drug, the FDA launched an investigation. It was concluded that there was not sufficient evident to link Viagra to the condition.

“At this time, it is not possible to determine whether these oral medicines for erectile dysfunction were the cause of the loss of eyesight or whether the problem is related to other factors such as high blood pressure or diabetes, or to a combination of these problems,” the FDA said in a statement.

The regulatory agency did, however, decide an updated warning level should be used.

The new label reports that vision loss has been reported rarely and advises patients to stop taking the medicine and contact a physician immediately if they experience sudden or decreased vision loss in one or both eyes.

The FDA also advises patients to report any history of severe vision loss or previous bouts with NAION to their physicians. Such patients face an increased risk of developing the condition again.

A continual assault of ringing phones, incoming e-mails, and warbling pagers and other electronic devices bombards office workers. The end result of that leaves workers tired and distracted, and suffering a temporary IQ drop greater than when smoking pot.

According to CNN.com, 80 clinical trials conducted by a British psychiatrist considered the effects of juggling work and messages on workers.

What Dr. Glenn Wilson found was a 10-point IQ drop in his study subjects. This would be equal to missing a whole night’s sleep or more than double the 4 point IQ drop after smoking marijuana.

“This is a very real and widespread phenomenon,” Dr. Wilson said. “We have found that this obsession with looking at messages, if unchecked, will damage a worker’s performance by reducing their mental sharpness.”

People seem to feel especially pressured into checking and responding quickly to e-mail. Half of Dr. Wilson’s test subjects answered e-mail within an hour of receiving it. Nearly two out of three feel the need to check messages while on vacation or otherwise away from the office.

“Companies should encourage a more balanced and appropriate way of working,” said Dr. Wilson.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

Did Bloggers Overreact To Target?

Do bloggers influence other entities? Do their breaking news stories accomplish the intended goal? Discuss at WebProWorld.

The pages that brought attention to Target.com were for products that some might not expect to see available from a family-oriented business. One such page intimated that Target.com was offering illegal drugs, while another had more of an adult theme associated with it. Links to these pages have been showing up on a number of popular blogs, like BoingBoing.net; and news sites, like Fark.com.

Because word travels around the Internet at an incredible rate, it wasn’t long before a number of notable blogs began taking Target to task for featuring this type of content. WebProNews contributor and blogger extraordinaire Steve Rubel had this comment about Target’s oversight, “Dear Target, a PR crisis is brewing for your company in the blogosphere. Please tell me you’re listening.” Steve’s blog entry was not the only one either.

The reason why Target’s online inventory may contain questionable content is because Amazon.com powers Target’s site. This means that two companies share databases, and therefore, inventory. These “questionable” products appearing on Target.com are a result of Amazon.com’s inventory (the product in the “illegal drugs” link above is a book). A better explanation appears on NoahBrier.com, courtesy of Adam Kalsey:

“Apparently this isn’t a test data problem. It’s a problem with not enough product details and the way the ecommerce system’s back end works. The item in question is a book that Amazon carries, but Amazon has no details on the book. Since Target.com is managed by Amazon, many of the products sold by Amazon can be forced to show in the Target.com design; just tack the ASIN from Amazon onto the Target URL. For instance, you buy Isaac Mizrahi cashmere gloves from Target.com even though your local Target [doesn't] carry this item.

When the book is shown on Amazon, it’s obvious that Amazon is selling a book entitled Marijuana,’ but when shown through Target’s interface it just looks like they’re selling pot.”

Blogger Jeremy Zawodny took issue with what he perceived as jumping the gun and devoted a blog entry toward explaining his position. The entry, called Are bloggers really that dumb, says, “It’s a stupid mistake. Are we too screwed up to realize that companies are composed of people and that people sometimes make mistakes?” Jeremy continued with, “I suspect that if someone bothered to tell them about the problem instead of using this as an opportunity to blame their PR folks for not reading blogs, they probably would have fixed it and gone on with life. Making fun of them on your blog is all well and good, but calling this a crisis strikes me as being over the top.”

This led to a bigger disagreement across quite a few blogs over the influence of the blogosphere. Some believe, with some justification, that bloggers do have an effect on company procedure. This train of thought would be supported by the blogs started by the search engines. Since it’s inception, the MSN Search Blog has been used as a good source of public feedback for the company’s search engineers.

However, there are those believe that the blogosphere has no influence. This is evident by many of the comments accompanying Steve Rubel’s blog entry. Concerning Target.com, Robert Scoble, commenting on Steve’s site, had this to say:

“With every hour that a representative of Target doesn’t come here or any of the other blogs involved at this point it just demonstrates they don’t know how to do searches on their company name on PubSub, Feedster, or Technorati and that they haven’t dedicated anyone to watch what people are saying about them online.”

Although, the fact that they haven’t reinforces the belief that bloggers don’t have as much influence as they think, according to the people who disagree with Steve and Robert. How much influence do you think bloggers have?

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.