"Dentists leafing through The Journal of the American Dental
Association last May found a study concluding that a new
drug called Bextra offered relief from one of their
patients' worst nightmares - the acute pain that follows
dental surgery. Federal regulators had rejected that conclusion only six
months before, leaving Bextra's marketers, Pharmacia and
Pfizer, hard pressed to sell it as an advance over
Celebrex, their earlier entry in a crowded market for pain
drugs. The new study helped light a fire under Bextra. Its sales

For years CBS (and all the other networks) have run fake news stories in the form of Video News Releases (VNRs). But now, CBS is also in the business of creating, producing and distributing VNRs. These phony news stories appear on TV networks and their affiliates, misleading viewers into thinking they are watching real news reports when in fact they are watching cleverly-disguised commercials designed to look just like real news. Thousands of VNRS are produced and aired every year.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations hired APCO Worldwide to develop "positive U.S.-ASEAN ties." "President Bush has made establishing free trade agreements with each individual ASEAN nation a foreign policy priority," O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports. "The U.S. Administration also counts on ASEAN support for its war on terrorism." Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei and Myanmar are ASEAN member countries.