Category Archives: Marketing ethics

Dr. Sherry Turkle: “I share, therefore I am”

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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Dr. Sherry Turkle has interviewed countless people about their plugged-in lives. In her most recent TED talk, the MIT professor and author (Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other) observes that being so pervasively plugged into mobile technology not only changes what we do, but can even change who we are. She notes, for example, that people think nothing of texting during corporate board meetings. They shop and browse and update Facebook during classes and presentations. They sleep with their smartphones. People text at funerals.

People even talk about the important new skill, she says, of learning to make eye contact – while texting.  Continue reading →

The alcohol industry’s “alcopop” strategy hooks underage drinkers

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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I remember the first time I tried a chilled bottle of lemonade-and-vodka at a backyard barbecue for our running group many summers ago. Fantastic!  It was such a hot afternoon, I had another icy cold one immediately after the first.  I may have had a couple more, in fact – they were that good. And, best of all, they didn’t even taste like real alcohol! Now a recent study* published in the January 2012 issue of the American Journal of Public Health investigates the sophisticated public relations and marketing strategies that industry is using to re-make the image of distilled spirits like my lemonade-and-vodka to specifically target underage drinkers.   Continue reading →

The myth of osteoporosis: blowing the whistle on the “epidemic”

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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When Dr. Victoria Seewaldt of Duke University School of Medicine reviewed a controversial new book about osteoporosis in the Journal of the American Medical Association* in 2005, she started off as an admitted skeptic. The review was for Gillian Sanson‘s book, The Myth of Osteoporosis: What Every Woman Should Know About Creating Bone Health. The book’s premise challenged almost every truism that most doctors believed – and may still believe – about osteoporosis.

Dr. Seewaldt is not only a physician, but also the daughter of an osteoporosis patient; her mother was diagnosed after fracturing a hip at age 72. She explained:

“Until her hip fracture, my mother was a ferocious shopper. Even in her early 70s, my mother would race down Fifth Avenue in New York City, shopping bags in hand, leaving me out of breath and begging for a rest.

“Then one day, my mother fractured her hip. Suddenly, our lives changed. For this reason, l initially approached Gillian Sanson’s book with significant reservations.”

But by the end of this book, Dr. Seewaldt found that her “reservations had turned to enthusiasm”.  Continue reading →

“Substantially Unsafe”: 30 disturbing facts about medical devices

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
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Warning: you might need to go have a little lie-down after you take in the facts contained in a new Public Citizen report called Substantially Unsafe. You’d think that a medical device that’s  implanted inside your body should be at least as safe as a pill that you swallow, wouldn’t you? But this report warns that medical devices (such as pacemakers, heart valves, insulin pumps, cardiac defibrillators and orthopedic hip or knee implants) can actually pose a serious threat to patients, and that existing safeguards must be strengthened.

As a heart patient, I’m particularly alarmed by disclosures about cardiac devices – a category that’s been associated with significant problems. Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) are just one example.  Since 2009, the FDA has received reports of close to 29,000 deaths or injuries from implanted ICDs, by far the most for any medical device type, according to a Consumer Reports Health analysis of a federal database. The most troublesome aspect of the devices are the leads – the wires that connect them to the heart.

Here are 30 highlights, or lowlights, of the Public Citizen report:  Continue reading →