In an era of rampant medical misinformation, health claims need scrutiny. Any claim made really – slow down and consider it.
PBS News Hour – By JoNel Aleccia, Associated Press Two cats in California died after drinking raw milk recalled for bird flu, their owner says – Jan 12, 2025 12:46 PM EST Journell said he had been drinking Raw Farm milk himself for several months because he heard it had “better immunity and healing properties” than pasteurized milk. He thought it might be able to help Alexander, who had been losing weight.“I was trying to make him healthier and make him live longer,” Journell said. Instead, Alexander died on Thanksgiving Day. Tuxsie followed two days later.
But just like a lot of other scams running rampant, many people will continue to believe the government would never allow this, surely, and continue to assume if something wasn’t true, it couldn’t be claimed. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. And that’s especially true in America today.
“Many people rationalize that if it were really dangerous the government wouldn’t let it be advertised. They are wrong in that thinking. It is dangerous and the government does let it be advertised.” — Rick Pollay, Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco (1992)
Citation Needed – Crypto recaps Issue 71 – (Crypto) banks are not your friends – Celsius’ Alex Mashinsky pleads guilty to fraud, some Tornado Cash sanctions are overturned, and tech billionaires complain about “debanking”. Molly White Dec 5, 2024 While some say that people just have to be on high alert at all times and in every interaction for possible scams, the reality is that most people just don’t expect companies to lie to their faces — particularly US-domiciled companies that they expect to be under the watchful eye of regulators. Most people don’t think twice about whether the bank they’re signing up with is likely to collapse — and many people who encountered Celsius didn’t understand that Celsius was meaningfully different from a bank. Even as we reflect on Celsius and the massive failures of not just financial regulators, but regulators like the FTC who are meant to prevent deceptive advertising, politicians are boasting about plans to hobble regulators and make them even less effective in fulfilling their mandates. Should they succeed in these plans, perhaps some will react by putting their shields up, adopting the degree of suspicion nearing paranoia that may be required in an every-person-for-themselves world without adequate regulators. More likely, countless more will continue to rely on regulators even in their absence, and be ruined because of it.