Thursday 6 December 2007

Some paranoid campaigning against avaricious campaigning

What I find quite baffling, time and time again, is that, while feelings run high about an independent. private blog, no one seems to be appalled at, just as an example, psykiatrifonden's (a major Danish organization , promoting bio-psychiatry) CAMPAIGN: "Depression can be measured". Yes, indeed! Sadness can be measured, you bet! You maybe didn't know? "The Hamilton Rating Scale is an internationally acknowledged method for measuring the degree of depression", the website tells us.

Well, some time ago, I actually took the test, on the i-net. Oh boy! I made a score of 29, and thus would have won a lifetime supply of Effexor, scoring clearly above the limit for "major depression". Had it just been for real. Now, one thing is certain: I'm definitely not "depressed". That's just not my style. Never was. So much for the international acknowledgement of this method.

Effexor? Why Effexor of all those antidepressants? Precisely! The campaign, which also ran on TV, is sponsored by Wyeth. We maybe aren't (yet) that sophisticated in Denmark to have direct-to-consumer advertising, but we sure do have indirect-to-consumer advertising! (Did I hear anyone murmur something about sarcasm??)

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