May 24, 2006
No Wonder They're Depressed
According to "Good Mood Food," an article from Science Now (subscribers only), "A team of researchers led by neurobiologist William Carlezon at Harvard's McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, studied how omega-3 fatty acids and uridine affect the behavior of rats using a standard depression test. (I'm trying to imagine just how this standard depression test for rats was developed but no matter--if I faced this treatment, I'd be depressed too.)
"Rats forced to swim in chilled water with no way to escape will normally become hopeless and float motionlessly. But when treated with prescription antidepressants, rats remain active longer, searching for an escape."
Apparently the poor rats who got high levels of Omega-3 oil in their diets also "stayed active and focused on escape." If I understand the research, that means we should be scarfing down copious amounts of salmon, herring and walnuts just in case we fall overboard during a cruise in icy waters.
That is the point, right?
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2006
Bad News for Big Eaters
While digesting my dessert of baked fruit salad with melted white chocolate and vanilla ice cream I noticed this bad news for food lovers: self-starving live-forever crackpots may have a point.
"Ultrasound examinations showed that the hearts of people on caloric restriction appeared more elastic than those of age- and gender-matched control subjects. Their hearts were able to relax between beats in a way similar to the hearts in younger people.
" 'This is the first study to demonstrate that long-term calorie restriction with optimal nutrition has cardiac-specific effects that ameliorate age-associated declines in heart function,' said principal investigator Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D., WUSTL assistant professor of medicine and an investigator at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome.
"Members of the Calorie Restriction Society try to consume between 10 percent and 25 percent fewer calories than average Americans while still maintaining proper nutrition. Caloric restriction tends to resemble a traditional Mediterranean diet, which includes a wide variety of vegetables, olive oil, beans, whole grains, fish and fruit, Fontana said. The diet avoids refined and processed foods, soft drinks, desserts, white bread and other sources of so-called 'empty' calories.
"Research on mice and rats has shown that stringent and consistent caloric restriction increases the animals' maximum life span by about 30 percent and protects them against atherosclerosis and cancer, but human study has been difficult because the caloric restriction lifestyle requires a strict diet regimen, both to keep the total number of calories low and to ensure that people consume the proper balance of nutrients."
My personal belief is that calorie restrictors don't live forever, it just feels like forever because there's no chocolate around.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2005
Strictly Optional: Chewing Gum Edition
Words of wisdom. "Success is like gum. It is fine till it's in your mouth but if you swallow it, it'll lead to indigestion."
Guess what crime you commit if you're a 34-year-old Australian twin suffering from anorexia? "Earlier this year, Clare received a two-month jail term for stealing chewing gum, a soft drink and a blender."
Too much information. "Cheryl Ankrom had set aside a minimum of one week for hospital recovery after her colon resection last August. Thanks to chewing gum, though, she headed home after four days. 'My intestines started working almost immediately,' says Ankrom."
Up next: pomegranate-flavored sausage, no kidding. "Ford Gum & Machine Co., Inc. of Lincolnshire, IL recently introduced Pomegranate Power Sugar Free Chewing Gum, a pomegranate and wild blueberry flavored gum made with natural pomegranate extract."
Americans gum up the works. "The Irish Business Against Litter group is seeking Government action to tackle the problem of chewing gum on Ireland's streets. ...The Government had planned a number of years ago to introduce a plastic-bag-style levy on chewing gum in an effort to combat the problem, but it abandoned the move following lobbying from US Ambassador James Kenny on behalf of the Wrigleys corporation."
In news beyond gum-chewing circles, it appears that Google has a worthy rival at last. From today's New York Times: "President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States..."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2005
When Bipolar Turns Deadly
According to the BBC News and the CNN report I watched this morning, the American shot by air marshals in Florida after claiming to have a bomb was mentally ill, probably suffering from bipolar disorder.
As Rigoberto Alpizar "ran down the aisle of the plane, a woman assumed to be his wife shouted for him to stop. Witnesses interviewed after the shooting described how Alpizar's companion tried to tell fellow passengers or air marshals that he suffered from bipolar disorder, or manic depression.
" 'I did hear the lady say her husband was bipolar and had not had his medication,' said Mary Gardner, another passenger.
" 'I saw the woman... she was hysterical.'"
No wonder. I'm no expert but it seems that people with severe cases of bipolar disorder may become reckless, impulsive and/or violent during certain phases of the illness. That's never a good combination and sometimes turns deadly. Family and friends may be assalted by an ill person or an ill person may commit suicide or be killed. If Rigoberto Alpizar was bipolar, he's certainly not the only bipolar person to be killed by law officials in Florida.
I'm not questioning the actions of the air marshals. All I really want to point out is the hell that mental illness creates for sufferers and their families. A friend has coped, many years now, with an ill spouse incapable of parenting or anything else. My friend works full-time, raises the kids and tries to stay sane in the face of enormous challenges that include utterly inadquate medical treatment from the family's HMO and callous indifference by society at large.
When it comes to mental illness, America is practically in the dark ages still. Study after study after study demonstrates that crazy people are crazy for a reason that has nothing to do with character or moral fiber or class or education. But not so very deep down, we don't want to believe that brain chemistry can be faulty and create an illness that affects thoughts and emotions, those intimate experiences that seem to define our very being. We prefer to think that crazy people and their families some how asked for their condition. We ignore them, whenever possible, and allow insurance companies, the medical establishment and society at large to treat mental illness as a faux illness and mentally ill people as second-class citizens who don't deserve the respect and treatment accorded to those suffering from more familiar, less scary illnesses such as diabetes.
What will it take to remove the stigma from mental illness so people can get treatment (and acceptance) as a matter of course? I wish I knew. My heart goes out to the family of Rigoberto Alpizar, to the air marshals who shot him and to the airplane passingers who witnessed it. The air marshalls didn't mean to kill an ill, unarmed man. They were protecting the passingers by doing what they were trained to do. I don't know how this particular tragedy could have been prevented. I do know that other, less visible tragedies are being enacted each day in homes all across America because mentally ill people--and their familes--aren't getting the help they so desperately need.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2005
Online Sales = Big Butts?
Michael Bazeley of the San Jose Mercury, among others, has reported on the new Pew Internet and American Life Project survey, which estimates that one in six American adults online has sold something through an Internet classified ad or auction site. (The word estimate is mine, btw. Why doesn't every journalist add that qualifier to survey items--what, it's too obvious? I think not.)
"The number of visitors to online classified sites jumped 80 percent from September 2004 to this September, according to data from comScore Media Metrix that was released as part of the Pew study. Craigslist was the most popular classified ads site, with 8.7 million visitors in September. Close behind was Trader Publishing Co., which operates nearly four dozen vehicle, merchandise, housing and employment sites, such as BargainTraderOnline.com and ForRent.com."
As Bazeley notes, "Much has been made about the effect that craigslist has had on newspaper classified advertising" but as far as I can tell, no one has considered the effect that Craigslist, eBay and other online sites may have had on the expanding American waistline. The so-called obesity epidemic has been linked to many factors, including excessive TV, a lack of exercise, the growing size of food portions and even movements in personal income tax rate and in the gender wage gap. So why can't online sales be a contributing factor?
Big butts are unhealthy, however we got them. And now, it turns out, they're unhealthy in an unexpected way. As Jessica Heslam writes in the Boston Herald,"Rapping about big behinds made Sir Mix-A-Lot famous, but a new medical study says those plump rumps don’t do women any good when it comes to getting a shot in the traditional spot. Researchers say a majority of people, especially women, aren’t getting the proper dosage from backside shots because the needle can’t get through the blubber. As few as one in 10 women (and six in 10 men) may be getting proper dosages from injections, said Dr. Victoria Chan of Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin."
CBS News explains why this matters: "The medicine gets injected into the buttock muscles, then filters into nearby blood vessels. Such shots are used for a variety of medicines, including vaccines, painkillers, contraceptives, and antinausea drugs." I may be joking about the online sales-obesity connection but drugs that can't do their job are no fun, especially for women who end up with pregnant or ill as a result.
At least there's one bright spot on the horizon: the obesity rate in Mexico is expected overtake the U.S. rate soon. Alas, no word yet on how their pets rank compared to our pets.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2005
The Kinky Appeal of Avian Flu
The Avian Flu is coming. Are you scared yet? You should be. Various newspapers and helpful outlets like The History Channel are doing their best to scare the bejeesus out of us. But why would we allow ourselves to be scared? Physician Abigail Zuger shares her experience in a terrific essay in today's New York Times. Some of her patients prefer to worry about unlikely health threats rather than actual health threats. (Don't miss the emphysema sufferer who prefers worrying about avian flu to quitting cigarettes.) Once again, denial trumps reality. And why not? Reality is a bitch.
"Of four patients I saw in a single hour last week, three announced how scared they were of the avian flu. I reassured them, but there was quite a bit I did not say, and here it is.
"I did not say: If you want to be scared, then how about that drug habit of yours you think I don't know about? How about the fact that you are 100 pounds overweight and eat nothing but junk? How about the fact that in a few short months Medicaid is going to stop paying for your very expensive medications and no one knows how just high that Medicare Part D deductible and co-payment are going to be? I did not say: If you want something to be scared of, how about the drug-resistant Klebsiella that is all over this very hospital, an ordinary run-of-the-mill bacterial strain that has become so resistant to so many antibiotics that we've had to resurrect a few we stopped using 30 years ago because they were so toxic.
"That Klebsiella is one scary germ. It's in hospitals all over the country, and by now it's probably killed a thousandfold more people than the avian flu.
"But you don't hear much about our Klebsiella. Like our bad habits and our dismally insoluble health insurance tangles, our antibiotic-resistant bacteria are with us, right here, right now."
Speaking of dismally insoluble health insurance tangles, it's nice to see Wal-Mart's charm offensive include more affordable health insurance for its employees. Although that won't solve all their problems. If they get seriously ill the first year, they're screwed thanks to a $25K cap on benefits. And if Barbara McNees has her way, the naughty ones won't get coverage because they won't deserve it. McNees is president and CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce and as a representative of small businesses, she's understandably concerned about the employer cost of health insurance.
"We must deal with the 600-pound gorilla sitting in the national living room -- health care spending that is approaching one-sixth of U.S. gross domestic product. This will require nothing less than wrenching changes in health care delivery, health care financing (e.g., no payments for preventable patient injuries such as hospital-acquired infections) and individual accountability for behavioral choices."
Individual accountability for behavioral choices: Does that mean smokers would no longer be entitled to health insurance? That only wealthy people would be able to afford character defects, at least when it came to medical treatment? Isn't getting lung cancer, say, accountability enough? Do we have to thumb our noses at people who may have made some poor choices and deny them insurance coverage as well? That is one scary concept. Scarier, even, than avian flu. McNees may spring from upstanding, Puritan stock that never exhibited human weakness or fraility in any way. Most Americans can't make that claim. We're flawed; so are the people we love. But not as flawed as McNees' idea or a health system that leaves millions without coverage.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:02 PM | Comments (1)
May 23, 2005
Digital Life New Ad Vehicle for MSNBC
"MSNBC.com, a leader in breaking news and original journalism on the Internet, announces the launch of Digital Life, found within the site's Tech & Science section. This new, interactive lifestyle technology subsection allows users to enter a digital representation of various living spaces in the home and quickly discover the way technology has transformed each." The living room, anyway.
Dear reader, do we suppose Digital Life was created because actually expecting MSNBC readers to rise from their computers and walk into their own kitchens or bathrooms or bedrooms to note the vast and sweeping, if largely imaginary, technological changes they will find there is simply too much work? Do we imagine the birth of Digital Life was prompted by MSNBC's confusing organization of technology coverage until this very announcement, which signals a new an exciting trend in consumer responsiveness? Or do we believe that the most effective way for MSNBC to get Best Buy to sign up for an 11-month sponsorship and brand marketing campaign was to unveil Digital Life and, with it, spanking new sponsorship opportunities?
Need a few moments to ponder that? Didn't think so. " 'Through ingenuity and great collaboration we have created a product that has yielded the single largest sponsorship of any feature in the history of MSNBC.com,' said Kyoo Kim, Vice President of Sales of MSNBC.com, 'proof once again that advertisers understand the power of the Internet and are using online leaders like MSNBC.com to reach their key consumers.' "
Fine by me and I hope Best Buy is very happy with its purchase. I know who pays the content bills in this world. Michael Rogers, a columnist for the new section, is a real sweetie but the conceit is a stinker. In a world of podcasts and videocasts and streaming video (not that I necessarily approve) was interactive floorplans the best sponsorship fig leaf they could muster? A scary thought. Folks at Ziff Davis and MIT are bound to be pleased about MSNBC using that name but we don't care: media folks flatter each other all the time with this very special type of tribute. I'd swipe a good headline in a heartbeat.
Speaking of heartbeats, my pulse went up a notch or two after discovering this sexy branding expert, who's waiting for an opportunity to raise your pulse as well. Just how sexy is he? "His high energy and brain power are truly infectious. You will be roused into action by his stimulating presentations." Triple XXX marketing action: Who knew?
In related news the Times of London announced today that "scientists in Israel have cracked the complicated cognitive code that determines whether individuals are able to understand sarcasm. Yeah, right. No, really. The findings, published today by the American Psychological Association, could provide vital clues to the best way of helping people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, as well as those with some forms of brain damage, to improve their communication skills."
So hey, there's hope for me yet. You too.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
Global Warming Slugfest
My friend Richard Reynolds points out that the New Yorker is hardly alone in covering the global warming story: Mother Jones' May/June issue has a terrific (if depressing) cover package on the topic. I started to type "issue" but it's only an issue in a political sense. Unfortunately, American journalists have contributed to the idea that global warming is a wacky, unproven theory. As veteran journalist Ross Gelbspan points out in Mother Jones, "A prime tactic of the fossil fuel lobby centered on a clever manipulation of the ethic of journalistic balance. Any time reporters wrote stories about global warming, industry-funded naysayers demanded equal time in the name of balance. As a result, the press accorded the same weight to the industry-funded skeptics as it did to mainstream scientists, creating an enduring confusion in the public mind. To this day, many people are unsure whether global warming is real."
That's the result of the kind of journalism that substitutes a supposed objectivity for actual analysis and that achieves "balance" by volume. Most of the time reporting is just the filler between the ads that keep the mainstream media machine humming. That's okay. That's the system. But now and again there are topics of enormous importance that beg for serious, thoughtful and appropriate and sustained coverage. The U.S. media have fallen down on the job, says Gelbspan: According to one study, the U.K. media have devoted about three times as much coverage to global warming as their Yankee counterparts.
Gelbspan does not suggest critics of global warming should be ignored. "There are a few credentialed scientists who still claim climate change to be inconsequential. To give them their due, a reporter should learn where the weight of scientific opinion falls -- and reflect that balance in his or her reporting. That would give mainstream scientists 95 percent of the story, with the skeptics getting a paragraph or two at the end. But because most reporters don't have the time, curiosity, or professionalism to check out the science, they write equivocal stories with counterposing quotes that play directly into the hands of the oil and coal industries by keeping the public confused."
Newspaper columnist Bill Steigerwald was so troubled by the lack of balance in reporting by the MoJo crew that he called up Professor Fred Singer, a critic of the global warming theory, to help redress the problem. But as Gelbspan puts it, "When the subject is a matter of fact, the concept of balance is irrelevant. What we know about the climate comes from the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history—the findings of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC’s conclusions, that the burning of fossil fuels is indeed causing significant shifts in the earth’s climate, have been corroborated by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. D. James Baker, former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, echoed many scientists when he said, 'There is a better scientific consensus on this than on any other issue I know—except maybe Newton’s second law of dynamics.' "
Scientific consensus sucks if you're an SUV-loving, energy-hogging, first-world consumer of the highest order, as many of us are. (Don't you touch my remote, bucko, and I'm not kidding.) It's not so surprising that people (including government officials, corporate executives and just plain Joes) would prefer not to think about the ramifications of the extraordinarily broad support for the existence of global warming among the science set. Especially if the existence of global warming puts a damper on a professional career or chosen industry. That does not excuse the many U.S. media types who have been weenies on this topic and it does not excuse Steigerwald for prizing "balance" over smarts.
Writer George Monbiot has made some interesting global-warming-related discoveries on the media front. "For the past three weeks, a set of figures has been working a hole in my mind. On April 16, New Scientist published a letter from the famous botanist David Bellamy. Many of the world's glaciers, he claimed, 'are not shrinking but in fact are growing. ... 555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich, Switzerland, have been growing since 1980.' " This seemed odd to Monbiot, so he called the World Glacier Monitoring Service and read Bellamy's letter over the phone. A hasty response ("complete bullshit") and further investigation determined that Bellamy had somehow channeled Pierre Salinger and picked up the info off a crackpot web site run by a guy with a fondness for Lyndon Larouche-sponsored publications. Which leads us back to Professor Singer.
It turns out the statistics published by the Larouche magazine "were first published online by Professor Fred Singer, one of the very few climate change deniers who has a vaguely relevant qualification (he is, or was, an environmental scientist). He posted them on his web site www.sepp.org, and they were then reproduced by the appropriately named junkscience.com, by the Cooler Heads Coalition, the National Center for Public Policy Research and countless others. They have even found their way into The Washington Post. They are constantly quoted as evidence that manmade climate change is not happening. But where did they come from? Singer cites half a source: 'a paper published in Science in 1989.' Well, the paper might be 16 years old, but at least, and at last, there is one. Surely? I went through every edition of Science published in 1989, both manually and electronically. Not only did it contain nothing resembling those figures; throughout that year there was no paper published in this journal about glacial advance or retreat."
Nobody's perfect. Maybe Singer was simply wrong about the year. Maybe the paper actually exists. And maybe the New Yorker is staffed soley by commies and Mother Jones employs angry radicals out to destroy America. Assume it's all true. That still doesn't make more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries wrong about global warming. Or as Bill Moyers put it last Sunday, "A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 10, 2005
Global Warming Ate My Homework
I need to focus on upcoming interviews about RSS, marketing and how best to use the former for the latter. This is difficult to do because I made the mistake of reading part 2 of Elizabeth Kolbert's series of articles on global warming in the New Yorker. I only just got the May 2nd issue (the wages of living in Europe) and innocently thought I'd skim it over lunch and then forget about it. Forget about it? Not damn likely. There's a Q&A with Kolbert at the New Yorker web site that nicely sums up the reasons for my new-found anxiety:
"One disturbing thing about your article is just how alarmed many seemingly sober-minded scientists are. What sort of a gap is there between expert and lay opinion on climate change?
"That’s a good question. I think there is a surprisingly large—you might even say frighteningly large—gap between the scientific community and the lay community’s opinions on global warming. As you point out, I spoke to many very sober-minded, coolly analytical scientists who, in essence, warned of the end of the world as we know it. I think there are a few reasons why their message hasn’t really got out. One is that scientists tend, as a group, to interact more with each other than with the general public.
"Another is that there has been a very well-financed disinformation campaign designed to convince people that there is still scientific disagreement about the problem, when, as I mentioned before, there really is quite broad agreement.
"And third, the climate operates on its own timetable. It will take several decades for the warming that is already inevitable to be felt. People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes."
So here's the problem: I'll probably be dead before the globe is hit with a deadly drought (the likes of which we've seen before, and it's way ugly, according to Kolbert's reporting). But my daughter may not be. Exactly what advice should I give her on accessorizing for catastrophic climate change? I'm thinking an organic hemp iPod case shouldn't make the cut, no matter how environmentally friendly.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2005
Success of Drug Ads Elates Marketers, May Depress Others. Need a Paxil?
"Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today." That doctors are human is evident in this story from the Washington Post.
"The researchers sent actors with hidden tape recorders into general physicians' offices in three cities between May 2003 and May 2004. ...Half the actors simulated patients suffering from depression, describing lengthy periods of sadness, low energy, poor appetite and sleep, and early-morning awakening. The others described having suffered a career upheaval and having fatigue, stress and difficulty sleeping, symptoms that did not warrant medication. More than half of those without simulated depression who mentioned Paxil got a prescription, underscoring how willing doctors are to go along with patients' requests."
Amanda Gardner, writing for HealthDay News, quotes the concerns of Matthew F. Hollon, a physician who wrote an editorial about the study. " 'The system, as it stands now, is also biased against those with the least resources. ...Those at highest risk may be those that don't have health insurance,' Hollon said. 'If New Zealand passes a ban on [such advertising] this year, the U.S. will have the distinction of being the only advanced industrialized country that allows [it], does not limit pharmaceutical price increases and does not have any national policy guaranteeing health care. My patients, many without adequate insurance, pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and when you look at the money spent on [this advertising], you wonder if it's really worth it.' "
Clearly it's worth it to the companies that advertise and the companies that sell advertising. I expect that pharmaceutical and/or advertising industry executives will make sober, serious, responsible-sounding statements in response to the study, then go back to their offices, lock the doors and start dancing in glee. This study, in which actors claim they saw TV ads about Paxil, is one big sloppy kiss to mainstream advertising, which has been beaten up badly by its digital rivals. Sure the actors were being paid to utter the words Paxil and TV and ad but we know that real people do that too. The study proves that if you inundate American consumers with enough drugs ads on TV, print and elsewhere to get them to request a brand-name drug that doctors, God bless 'em, will cough up (so to speak) a prescription on the spot. That's the entire point of these pharmaceutical marketing programs, of course, but how often does Madison Avenue get independent confirmation that their wares are so effective?
I don't think this study examined the background of the physicians to see if there was any relationship between those who gave out prescriptions inappropriately and the company that makes Paxil. It's no secret that pharmaceutical companies lavish a great deal of time, attention and money on marketing to doctors. Presumably drug companies do it because it works. Maybe the rest of us will discover just how well it works in a future study.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 23, 2005
Healthy Body, Healthy Brain (Fat-Deprived Spirit)
Lost your keys again? "The problem isn't a loss of memory, says LaVoie, associate professor of psychology at St. Louis University. The problem is a loss of focus. People aren't paying attention, aren't taking the time to do one thing at a time and make the whole experience a permanent memory."
True enough but some folks do develop Alzheimer's. But maybe some cases can be prevented "by taking steps like eating low-fat diets rich in antioxidants, maintaining normal weight, exercising regularly and avoiding bad habits like smoking and excessive drinking," notes NYT health columnist Jane E. Brody. "Several other practices - including remaining socially connected and keeping the brain stimulated by reading, doing puzzles and learning new things - also appear to protect the brain against dementia."
Note that excursions to Mama Mia, hair salons and ice cream parlors are not on this list. Bet that Brody gal is big fun on weekends.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2005
13 Things That Don't Make Sense
From New Scientist. (Thanks, Peter!) "DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.
"This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.
"So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don't know."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2005
Product Placement, Celeb Edition
"Psychologists and economists are using sophisticated brain scanners to tease apart the automatic judgments that dart below the surface of awareness," notes the LA Times. "The why of buy is a trillion-dollar question. By one estimate, 700 new products are introduced every day. Last year, 26,893 new food and household products materialized on store shelves around the world, including 115 deodorants, 187 breakfast cereals and 303 women's fragrances. In all, 2 million brands vie for attention."
And it seems like half of them were handed out in celebrity goodie bags at the end of the month. I mean, just read the fabulous press release below. And while you do, ponder this question: If the celebs went for the instant appetite suppressant and ignored the macaroons, does the product-placement firm owe the cookie company a refund?
"Stars Receive Goodie Bags Valued in Excess of $17,000 at Ebony's 60th Birthday Bash
"( EMAILWIRE.COM, February 26, 2005 ) Beverly Hills, CA -- The stars came out last night to Crustacean to commemorate Ebony's 60th birthday at "Hollywood in Harlem." Oscar nominees, honorees and special guests including Oprah, Samuel L. Jackson, and Wyclef Jean received gift bags produced by Luxe Bags (formerly Buzz Bags). The goodies were contained in beach totes from Hadley Pollet and deluxe duffel bags from FedEx.
"Contents included a gift certificate from Arizona resort/spa Sanctuary on Camelback ($7000), Platinum Jet Gift Card from Executive Charter Services ($2500), pair of ballet flats from London Sole ($155), Fashion Fair Cosmetics by EBONY, handbag designed from vintage LP covers (Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, etc.) by Carry a Tune ($165), Altoids Smalls, biotin nail strengthener Appearex, instant appetite suppressant Slimmints, Body Mint all-body deodorant tablets, hand-made chocolate macaroons by Melfer's Macaroons, Silhouette Titan Minimal Art sunglasses ($300), Adidas Adrenaline Man and Adidas Adrenaline Woman fragrances, Pro-V Relaxed & Natural collection by Pantene (www.pantene.com), Ray: A Tribute To The Movie, The Music, and The Man" etc. etc.
Product placement is big business. (I wrote a bit about it in a feature called "Under the Radar" for CMO magazine recently; gotta register to read it in the December issue.) How else to explain the Fab Four's foodie, Ted, dragging some poor guy to Costco for buffet supplies? Do not try to tell me that Ted goes to Costco when he's off duty. Which points to an important point about successful product placement: it has to be believable. That the gourmet member of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would recommend Costco pushes belief; so does the frequent appearance of those tooth-brightening strips in practically every episode. No wonder viewership declined by last fall. It was fun to follow the Cinderella makeovers of these slobs, including the magical visits to luxe shops. There's nothing magical about Costco.
Marketing Profs has a primer on the fine art of showering celebs with freebies and describes three techniques, along with a little history: "Centuries before Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped into his first Hummer, an 18th century potter named Josiah Wedgwood began supplying his wares to England's Queen Charlotte. Receiving the title 'Potter to Her Majesty' led to a huge amount of publicity for Wedgwood, which he took advantage of by using the term 'Queen's Ware' to describe his product."
Because it's all about the product. Alas, I don't get Turner Classic Movies but others can enjoy this month's film festival on Friday nights that's a salute to product placement in Hollywood, a very old if not always very honorable activity. (I'm thinking about the blatent product placement in The Muppet Movie, among other films, that got Big Tobacco in trouble some years back.)
If computers should ever turn out to be carcinogentic then Apple will be in big trouble as one of the champion product-placement practioners of all time. Brandchannel gave Apple its "Lifetime Achievement Award for Product Placement" (that and four bucks will get you a latte in Cupertino) and in the process, raises this inescapable issue:
"...Apple's global market share for computers dropped to less than two percent in 2004. ... While its iPod is certainly gobbling up market share, it is Apple's computers that have been onscreen for the last 20 years. In terms of product placement's effectiveness this raises some huge questions, one of which seems to imply that, at best, the effectiveness of product placement is completely unpredictable or, at worst, product placement doesn't really work at all."
Hmm, a marketing technique that that produces unpredictable sales or none at all? Staggering news. Up next: dog bites man. Still, gotta admire Brandchannel for refusing to gloss over this point.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:14 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
March 03, 2005
The Life You Save
Why spring cleaning is a really good idea.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:41 AM | Comments (3)