Here’s some beauty, which i didn’t learn until 2010 was by the artist Rigo 23 Here’s the background behind this work. See the following for a brief disquisition on truth:
For the past several days, Merck has had a two-full-page advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle. Below, I quote exactly from the text, with my interleaved comments:
“Are you taking Zetia® … or Vytorin®…?
“If so, you may be worried about recent news stories questioning the benefit of these medicines…[ellipsis theirs] on the basis of a single study that has generated a lot of confusion.”
[oh yes, the ‘confusion’!!!!! In the first place, the study was theirs, and its conclusions were quite clear, as numerous news articles have demonstrated. For example, here’s one from yesterday’s New York Times.
‘Confusion’ is what Merck is trying with this clever ad to create in order to keep the profit pipeline open. They made untold millions by stalling for two years publication of their negative study, and the last thing they want anybody to do is be ‘worried’ enough not to buy Zetia.]
“In fact, ZETIA and VYTORIN have been proven to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol along with diet in multiple clinical studies involving thousands of patients. Both the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association agree that lowering bad cholesterol is important.”
[Both sentences are 100% true even though neither of them addresses the issue. See the NYT link above. They are pure smoke screen and misdirection.]
“All of us at Merck and Schering-Plough proudly stand behind the established efficacy and safety profiles of ZETIA and VYTORIN.
[and we’re hoping you’ll be safe and join us and your neighbors on our bandwagon.]
“If you have high cholesterol, follow your doctor’s recommendations on eating right, staying active, and taking your prescribed medicines.”
[No argument here, except this time they left out the part about asking your doctor whether you might benefit from Zetia. That’s in a different ad campaign. Wouldn’t want to ‘confuse’ the public by putting it in here. The above is followed by two columns of the standard sort of disclaimer, buried in the middle of which is the following sentence: ]
“ZETIA has not been shown to prevent heart disease or heart attacks.”
[Oh. Well, you ask, then why in the world would anyone want to take it? And then you realize that by burying this tidbit down in the middle of the blather in the lower part of the page, they can defend themselves against lawsuits by claiming that they warned users that the drug was useless. Meanwhile, they tout the drug in the top half, beyond which few readers will venture.]
The levels of greed and mendacity displayed by Merck are egregious. Merck made millions while hundreds, thousands? ten of thousands? of people died while taking a drug that was useless. The executives of this company are mass murders. They should be hanged on the White House lawn, live on prime-time television.
As it is, they will remain fat, smug, and obscenely wealthy…laughing at all us fools for letting them get away with it.
Actually, their behavior is even worse than I’ve had space to discuss. Here’s that link again: New York Times