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Bird Flu Marketing — The Dark Side
Yep. JunkScience.com comes through again! Their consistent, fact-based reportage sheds a balanced and sane POV on issues the various lobbyists love to muddy the water with.
And as a child of the direct responses industry, I love the facts.
Well a couple of days ago I wrote about how the environmental lobby launched a disingenuous assault by marketing allegedly endangered polar bears.
Today, it’s the flu lobbyists. Prior to this report I’d never heard of a flu lobbyist, but it makes sense. As with any good detective work, you have to follow the money. Who stands to gain if everyone is scared into taking bird flu vaccines in order to not become another statistic in the “coming pandemic”?
Why, our dear and good altruistic friends at the pharmaceutical companies, that’s who. And for the last 2 years, the global population has been the target of their fierce marketing campaign, with words like “pandemic” being throw in for an extra kick-start to the heart.
But now, in another case when the fanciful marketing crosses the line into downright fabrication, they’ve been exposed. Take a “gander,” sources at the end.
Flu fearmongers must be quite depressed these days. Seasonal flu is late. Bird flu – despite all the headlines – hasn’t gained much traction among humans. And we haven’t had pandemic flu in 36 years.
The good news is so good (for the rest of us, that is) that the flu lobby seems to be resorting to manufacturing fantasy flu statistics.
Source: FOXNews.com - One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Unfortunately, much as with skewed research on global warming and polar bear extinction, news organizations are more content to simply read the lobbyists press releases on air and print them verbatim than do any investigative journalism to sort fact from fiction.
They could stand to learn a thing or two from the direct response folk. Test and track. Test and track.
By Walter |
Topics: Pet Peeves, Pro Analysis |