Recent quotes:

How Big Pharma Finds Sick Users on Facebook – The Markup

Ads for Latuda, an antipsychotic from the company Sunovion used in the treatment of bipolar depression, were shown to users with an interest in the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, a nonprofit support group. We also found it targeted at users interested in therapy and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Patient Advocacy Groups Take In Millions From Drugmakers. Is There A Payback? | Kaiser Health News

The financial ties are troubling if they cause even one patient group to act in a way that’s “not fully representing the interest of its constituents,” said Matthew McCoy, a medical ethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored a 2017 study about patient advocacy groups’ influence and transparency. Notably, such groups have been silent or slow to complain about high or escalating prices, a prime concern of patients. This story also ran on The Daily Beast. This story can be republished for free (details). “When so many patient organizations are being influenced in this way, it can shift our whole approach to health policy, taking away from the interests of patients and towards the interests of industry,” McCoy said. “That’s not just a problem for the patients and caregivers that particular patient organizations serve; that’s a problem for everyone.”

Online Intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous | Building an AA fellowship anytime, from anywhere, for everyone

The first AA meetings online used Bulletin Boards and were around 1986. Email groups started forming in the early nineties and the development of the worldwide internet rapidly fueled the growth and variety of groups. The first online AA group, Lamp-lighters, was formed in 1990, and has met by email continuously since then. Now there are hundreds of AA groups with thousands of members, connected together through this Online Intergroup. Using various mechanisms such as video conferencing, phone conferencing, message boards, email listserve, and chatrooms; the AA community is constantly connecting and finding new, creative ways to communicate the experience, strength and hope of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine - The Atlantic

Facebook is an agent of government propaganda, targeted harassment, terrorist recruitment, emotional manipulation, and genocide—a world-historic weapon that lives not underground, but in a Disneyland-inspired campus in Menlo Park, California.

Maybe Freedom is Having No Followers to Lose - Insight

One of the reasons for this discrepancy is that, on social media, the dynamic for in-group status assertions and status competition is strong—and getting stronger for this topic as the pandemic rages on. I’m no stranger to this dynamic, as it is something that’s very common among social movements (something I’ve studied at length) and, well, pretty much any human group. Who’s in and who’s out of the group is a key force for group-based species like ours and thus “stay-in-your-lane” assertions and wagon-circling against criticisms from perceived outsiders is forceful in any human group or profession. As the pandemic progresses, and as the field feels more and more under attack (and much of it quite unfair and terrible) the dynamic strengthens, often to the detriment of the field.

Why cancer screening has never been shown to “save lives”—and what we can do about it | The BMJ

Discrepancies between disease specific and overall mortality were found in direction or magnitude in seven of 12 randomised trials of cancer screening.8 Despite reductions in disease specific mortality in the majority of studies, overall mortality was unchanged or increased. In cases where both mortality rates were reduced the improvement was larger in overall mortality than in disease specific mortality. This suggests an imbalance in non-disease specific deaths, which warrants examination and explanation.