Saw your posting, Fairwind, about the company which developed the “Four Gene Test”; in your post at Cancer Fourms you wrote:
They are a penny stock, (.20) symbol HDVY They have a website,
http://healthdiscoverycorp.com/
Readers here have lately been besieged by dialogue about the “business” of PC treatment, and even the “business” of Active Surveillance. Don’t think for a moment that PC screening also isn’t about “business” for the same reasons.
Surprised, or even pleased, to hear that a marketing rep from Abbott is willing to come to a “grassroots” men’s group such as USToo? Don’t be. Abbott is simply doing what is know as “cause-related marketing” or even more gratuitously as “passion branding.” Dirty secret? Some think so.
Would you be surprised that many of the grassroots groups campaigning passionately for PSA testing are funded largely by the drug companies which supply the tests? USToo, known as a lay, grass-roots, independent, patient-focused charitable organization caught a lot of flak when it was revealed that 95% of the group’s tax deductable funding came from the pharmaceutical industry (Abbott included; check the USToo website for Corporate Sponsors).
The fact that certain “grassroots” organizations have heavy funding from “big pharma” may come as a surprise to much of the public, which has faith in the independence of non-profit organizations. An investigation by the Attorney General found that buying trust is a key goal for drug companies that sponsor non-profit groups through stealth “passion branding” campaigns.
Right or wrong? I’m not offering an opinion. It’s the way it is.