WARNING: Industry is Blogging These NewsGroups to Maintain Their
Monopolies

To : All participants and readers of sci.med, misc.health.alternative,
uk.people.health, talk.politics.medicine

Please be aware that many comments and responses posted to this forum
are not those of casual posters interested in an honest exchange.  A
number of individuals with ties to industry are engaging an effort to
shape public sentiment about the risks of mainstream medicine while
denigrating the benefits and validity of natural medicine.  I refer to
these individuals broadly as "Pharma Bloggers"(*).  Pharma Bloggers on
usenet don't promote a specific company or product, as might be the
case with standard "blogging" on a weblog. Most of these people are
likely to have an association with a PR campaign whose "blogging"
efforts are underwritten by the media and marketing groups of industry.
They are not difficult to identify due to specific patterns of
behaviour in posting.

Here are a few points to remember while participating in usenet
newsgroups:

1. Pharma Bloggers on usenet use intimidation, mockery, and insults to
silence those who express belief or interest in natural medicine.

2. Pharma Bloggers on usenet attack those who question the
effectiveness of mainstream medicine and defend disease-management
"healthcare" as the only viable form of medicine.

3. Pharma Bloggers on usenet post the majority of their responses
simply to bury the comments of others; they also strive obsessively to
have the last word.

4. Pharma Bloggers on usenet are much faster at posting than casual
participants; they almost always respond first to a new thread,
question, or observation.

5. Pharma Bloggers on usenet use multiple "bloggers" in a swap-&-relay
fashion to create an aura of the "consensus view" in an effort to
isolate posters who question the value of mainstream medicine.  You
will see this tactic used more often than any other.

6. Pharma Bloggers on usenet frequently refer readers to
"quack-busting" websites designed to denigrate natural medicine
approaches and their proponents.  Under the guise of "consumer
protection," the extreme bias of these promoters of mainstream medicine
belies their true motives.

7. Pharma Bloggers on usenet laud the virtues of various mainstream
medical treatments, citing "evidence based medicine" and the FDA
approval process.  They ignore studies showing the iatrogenic affects
of such treatment, as well as a 20% recall for all previously approved
drugs, and hundreds of studies showing a disease relationship to use of
pharmaceutical drugs and other toxic exposures.  They also ignore
numerous studies showing the benefits of naturopathic healing,
including nutrient supplementation, exercise, stress reduction, and
other methods.

Tip: If you find yourself engaging a poster whose defense of mainstream
medicine is unusually dramatic in tone, or inexplicably vicious toward
others, and if that response is an attempt to denigrate natural
medicine, you can be sure you have stumbled upon a "Pharma Blogger."
Unfortunately, there are more of these individuals posting to usenet on
a daily basis than virtually anyone else, which is why I am posting
this alert.  If you find it odd that so few people on health-related
usenet newsgroups are expressing an interest in natural medicine, it
isn't because they aren't there, it's because they have been
intimidated into silence.  The Pharma Bloggers have over-run the
various newsgroups with their industrial brand of dogma, mockery, and
ridicule.  Many casual posters are simply frightened away.  That's a
primary goal of these industry media jockeys, and they are very good at
it.

(*) Pharma Blogger: An individual who uses the Internet to: 1) promote
and defend maintstream medicine while denigrating natural medicine
approaches; 2) attack others who express a preference for natural
medicine, or who question the value of mainstream medicine; and 3) cite
a variety of "junk medical science" funded by industry for the purpose
of establishing markets for marginally effective, and often dangerous,
medical products and devices.

PeterB