Musings of Erin

Now, I’ll admit that I wasn’t aware that vioxx had been pulled from the market. Actually, I’ve been blatently ignoring anything with the word vioxx in it for about 6 months now. I wasn’t listening to the advertising in the first place, and when they tried to cram their way into my inbox, I stopped paying attention altogether.

It turns out it’s bad for you! I’m really not suprised to see another pharmaceutical being pulled from market. How could I be, when the possible side effects most often are scarier than the symtom the drug is trying to cover.

WARNING: Please do not take this before bedtime, during waking hours, before eating, after eating, with or without milk. Possible side effects include third-degree burns to the esophogas, skin bubbling, ear drum disintegration, a creepy burning feeling all over your abdomen, and brain explosion. Use at your own risk.

Anyway, FightingforYou.com, an legal firm specializing in vioxx lawsuits, cites a study and says:

The clinical trial, initially developed to determine whether Vioxx would be effective in preventing colon polyps, found that those taking the drug for longer than 18 months had double the risk of a heart attack or stroke as those taking a placebo. Those taking the highest daily recommended dosage were found to have three times the risk of a severe coronary event.

Now, I’m don’t believe in pharmaceutical companies advertising to uneducated consumers. In my opinion, the pharmacuetical industry’s sales practices are shady at best - I’ve heard of them pillowing doctors offices with free samples and give them nice bonuses when prescriptions are given.

This leads me to wonder, are we just poisioning ourselves because of what we see on TV? We put so much faith in our doctors and the FDA, that when something like this BLOWS UP in our faces, can we really be surprised? We’re asking for cures for aging, and symtoms thereof, when we should be asking for cures for AIDS, MS, etc. Why are cosmetic and natural-aging remedies more important than life-saving and preventative medicine?

I may never understand…

It’s just amazing what some people will do for attention.

Scott Allen, of The Virtual Handshake and Entrepreneur.com fame (he blogs for http://entrepreneur.about.com) has been joe jobbed! A Joe Job, as defined by Wikipedia, is “an incident of spamming designed to tarnish the reputation of an innocent third party.”

What they’ve done with Scott is taken his name and email addressed and spammed the hell out of a lot of blogs… some of which hadn’t heard of him. They’ve sometimes inserted his telephone number, and other times used his wife’s name.

Thankfully, he’s taken some sage advice and reported the incidence(s) he’s aware of to the FBI internet crime devision. Since the joe jobber has implicated About.com, I’m sure their mighty legal department may have something to say regarding it. If you want to help the case, and help clear an honest man’s name:

How You Can Help

If you have received one of these bogus comments in my or my wife’s name (Jayne), please do the following:

1. Leave it up until I can capture a screen shot as evidence.
2. Make a note of the raw IP address.
3. If you can, please make a note of any other comment spam from the same IP address. This is particularly important.
4. Contact me with the information.
5. Once I’ve confirmed back to you that I’ve got the screenshot, delete the comment.

If you would like to support me in helping keep my name clear and catch this perpetrator:

1. Please post about it in your blog and link back to this post.
2. If you see fake comments in my name like the ones above, please contact me with the URL so I can gather evidence and contact the blog owner.

Link

Tags: Scott Allen, joe job, spam