7 June – This month, Americans look forward to summer, picnics, vacations and another DEADLY EPIDEMIC of pharmaceutical marketing campaigns.
The latest attack comes from the social marketing group DailyCandy, whose subscribers recently received this email:
Your kids’ wish list:
- Puppies
- Multicolored cereal
- Fifteen more minutes before bedtime
- PERTUSSIS VACCINE
Er, well, maybe they’re not exactly pining for that last one. But they should be, especially now that California is experiencing what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the worst epidemic of whooping cough in 60 years.
Fantabulous mommy that you are, you make sure your little ones have the utmost defense against whooping cough and the other serious illnesses vaccines help to fight. That’s why you’re all over the site L.A. County has developed…
(emphasis added).
Not so fast.
Click on the CDC link above you’ll discover that the link doesn’t go to the CDC but passes through this click-through link…
http://www.dailycandy.com/t/click/7/F569297/2871036/14
… which takes you to this logo at http://vaccinatela.com.
Just below the email happy face on the right, a hard-to-read disclaimer declares:
- The advertisement is funded by the CDC, but;
- The information DOES NOT “represent the official views of the CDC.”
The website doesn’t explain why the CDC funds a promotion they don’t scientifically support.
There’s more.
Click ABOUT US suggests that the LA County Department of Health is involved to “share the facts about vaccination and encourage parents and caretakers to… get their loved ones vaccinated…” Media requests are directed to Amy DuFour at Edelman.
A WHO-IS search confirms that the website is registered to Edelman.com – an international public relations/marketing firm.
Edelman aside, consider these FACTS:
- According to the CDC, pertussis (whooping cough) killed 17 Americans in 2000. That same year, vaccines killed or seriously injured 14,153 Americans. This means that Americans were 83,152 times more likely to be injured or killed from vaccines than pertussis in 2000.
- If we consider former FDA Director David Kessler MD estimate that only ONE PERCENT of all serious adverse drug events (reactions) are reported, the actual number of vaccine casualties in 2000 was probably closer to 1.4 million.
With a record like that, who would blame vaccine makers for hiring marketing executives to sell their poison?
Since the CDC doesn’t stand behind this propaganda, take a look at VaccinateLA. If you assume it’s connected to the LA County Health Department, you’re wrong. Scroll to the top of the page and click GET THE FACTS and scroll to the bottom. If you click PRIVACY POLICY, you’ll find yourself at the LA County website.
Scroll to the DISCLAIMER at the bottom:
“… the County of Los Angeles nor any of its employees, make any warranty… or assume any liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such information.”
So if the CDC and LA County Department of Health won’t stand behind this Edelman marketing website, who does?
According to her Linked in account, Amy DuFour is a Senior Account Executive at Edelman with a degree in journalism and masters degree in media and public affairs.
When you Google EDELMAN.COM and a vaccine manufacturer like GLAXOSMITHKLINE (GSK), you’ll find 634,000 hits that connect EDELMAN to employees like Andy Marks, whose clients include GSK and AstraZeneca.
GSK is no stranger to criminal activity. Faced with patent problems and busted for ghostwriting scientific papers and paying kickbacks, it’s no surprise that GSK has paid millions in fines or why they hire marketing experts like Amy to push their drugs.
If we consider that the pharmaceutical industry has paid $9 billion to settle thousands of criminal and civil complaints related to the illegal marketing of drugs that kill or injure a million Americans EVERY YEAR, it is clear that “fantabulous mommies” will not buy into the pharmaceutical propaganda unless someone like Amy puts a smiley face on it.
More on the CDC/FDA/HHS/NIH information shellgame is posted here.
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Tags: Amy DuFour, AstraZeneca, CDC, DailyCandy, Edelman, epidemic, GlaxoSmithKline, Los Angeles, pertussis, propaganda, vaccinatela, vaccine, whooping cough