Health

Bloomington, Indiana- Talk about "Deadly Spin" and documentary film "Sicko"

Submitted by Nikolina Lazic on

Event Details
Event Contact Name: 
Karen Green Stone
Event Contact Email: 
grostone@gmail.com
Event Date: 
Sunday, January 16, 2011 - 3:00pm to 6:00pm

Location

Buskirk-Chumley Theater
114 East Kirkwood Avenue
Bloomington , IN
See map: Google Maps

Sunday, January 16 @ 3pm- 6pm Buskirk-Chumley Theater, 114 East Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN  Wendell Potter Speaks Out About "Deadly Spin" and documentary film "Sicko"

Topics: 
Health

Taxpayers Subsidize Big Screen Movie Promos for Cigarettes, and More

Submitted by Anne Landman on

Burlesque the movieSteven Antin's new movie, Burlesque (PG-13), features about twenty different brands of products, including gratuitous use of R.J. Reynolds' Camel cigarettes. Other films that have showcased cigarettes this year include the Disney film The Sorcerer's Apprentice (rated PG, which features Newport cigarettes), and For Colored Girls (rated R, by Lionsgate, which features Marlboros). States are now spending millions to subsidize the production of movies, meaning taxpayers are not only paying to help big companies advertise their products, but they are also helping pay to showcase smoking -- a harmful addiction that many states are simultaneously spending millions to reduce. California taxpayers shelled out $7.2 million to subsidize the movie Burlesque alone, which not only features gratuitous smoking, but also showcases a slew of other brands, including Famous Amos cookies (the character Jack holds a box over his genitals), Dos Equis beer, Michelob, Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs, Oreos, KitchenAid, Ultimat Vodka, Coldwell Banker, Chase Bank, Patron Tequila and many more.

No
Main Source: 
SmokeFree Movies, December, 21, 2010
Topics: 
Advertising
Health
Media
Tobacco

Lorillard Loses

Submitted by Anne Landman on

A Massachusetts jury has ordered cigarette maker Lorillard, Inc. to pay $71 million in damages to the family of a Boston woman who said she was seduced into smoking Newport cigarettes as a child. The plaintiff, Marie Evans, died from lung cancer at age 54, after smoking Newport cigarettes for 40 years. Before her death, she gave a videotaped deposition in which described how, starting at age nine, she received free samples of cigarettes from a man in a white truck who would drive through their neighborhood passing them out to children. Evans said the trucks "seemed to be there waiting when we got out of school." Evans' sister, Leslie Adamson, corroborated her testimony. Evans accepted some responsibility for never being able to quit her nicotine addiction, even after suffering a heart attack at age 37. Lorillard denied marketing cigarettes to children and targeting black communities with Newports.

No
Main Source: 
Boston Globe, December 14, 2010
Topics: 
Health
Marketing
Tobacco

Insurers Spin Court Decision on Health Insurance Mandate

Wendell PotterWhen I testified before Congress last year, I told lawmakers that if they passed a health care reform bill with an individual mandate but no public option, they might as well call their bill the "Health Insurance Profit Protection and Enhancement Act." Well, of course, that is exactly what Congress did, but they didn't change the name of the new law as I suggested. I was as upset as anyone that the public option was stripped out, but I nevertheless later said that Congress should still pass the bill because of the protections it contained against common predatory practices by insurers, like canceling breast cancer patients' insurance in the midst of treatment and refusing to sell coverage at any price to people with pre-existing conditions. The bill also expands Medicaid to encompass several million Americans who cannot afford to buy overpriced and often inadequate health insurance.

Hell Freezes Over: Philip Morris Settles a Wrongful Death Suit

Philip Morris (PM) broke from its longstanding policy of never settling a personal injury case recently after it quietly paid $5 million to settle a wrongful death suit brought against its subsidiary, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco (USST), maker of Copenhagen and Skoal brands of spit tobacco. PM's parent company, Altria Group, acquired USST in 2009.

Kelly June Hill sued USST on behalf of her son, Bobby Hill, who died of oral cancer in 2003 at age 42. Bobby got addicted to spit tobacco as a child, long before health warning labels were put on the product in 1987. In the course of the case, USST dumped a half million pages of documents on the plaintiffs lawyers, which, by Hill's attorneys' own account, made searching for helpful material quite interesting.

The Worst PR Year for McDonalds

Submitted by Anne Landman on

Mechanically separated chicken?First, a weird photo of thick, pink, gooey sludge appeared on the Internet that was purported to be the raw material that chicken nuggets are made of. Then, in April, New York photographer Sally Davies purchased a Happy Meal, set the burger and fries on a plate in her apartment and photographed them every day for six months as an art project, only to discover that the Happy Meal looked exactly the same six months later -- no mold, no decomposition, nothing. Her "Happy Meal Project" started garnering attention from the media and time lapse video of it appeared on YouTube. The project led to speculation about the meal's composition, nutritional value and health effects, and put McDonalds in the unenviable position of arguing that its food can grow mold. Then in September, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine ran a gruesome anti-McDonalds "Morgue Ad" that advocated vegetarianism. Finally, in November the City of San Francisco effectively banned Happy Meals after it passed a law prohibiting restaurants from offering free toys with meals that contain excessive amounts of calories and fat. All in all, McDonalds took what some call its worst PR beating ever in 2010.

No
Main Source: 
DeathandTaxesmag.com, October 15, 2010
Topics: 
Obesity
Corporations
Public Relations

"Deadly Spin" Coming November 9

CMD's Senior Fellow on Health Care, Wendell PotterThe Center for Media and Democracy's Senior Fellow on Health Care, Wendell Potter, has a new tell-all book coming out November 9, Deadly Spin: An insurance company insider speaks out on how corporate PR is killing health care and deceiving Americans. The book details disinformation campaigns that health insurers use to cover up their misdeeds and manipulate public policy, reveals insurers' public relations tricks, like commissioning bogus scientific studies, working through fake "grassroots" organizations, and disseminating rhetoric designed to scare the public. (Think phrases like "socialism" and "death panels," that Wendell reveals were created by health insurance companies.) Wendell tells about the methods insurers use to "dump the sick," discusses the skyrocketing premiums and high deductibles that are putting health care out of reach for working people, and discloses the outrageous salaries that insurance companies executives make while denying care to patients. As the former head of Corporate Communications for CIGNA, Wendell is uniquely to qualified bring this important information to the public. The book, published by Bloomsbury, can be ordered at Amazon.com.

Consumers Win Important Battle Over How Health Care Reform Will Be Implemented

Thanks, NAIC!Earlier this week I asked you to send thank-you notes to one of America's biggest health insurers for helping to shed light on an important policy matter. If you did, thank you, but please don't put your good stationery away just yet. You need to write yet another note of gratitude -- this time to our state insurance commissioners. This morning they did the right thing for consumers when they refused to cave in to intense pressure from the profit-obsessed insurance industry to gut an important provision of the health care reform law.

How "Breast Cancer Awareness" Campaigns Hurt

Boobs string tankOctober is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Pink ribbons abound at department stores, grocery stores, gas stations, shopping malls and many other places. But the big "awareness" push may be misplaced. After all, lung cancer kills twice as many women each year as breast cancer -- more women every year in the U.S. die from lung cancer than from breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers combined. In 2009 alone, 31,000 more women died of lung cancer than breast cancer. But there aren't any ribbons, theme-colored products, corporate promotions, colored car magnets, festivals or fundraisers to make people aware of lung cancer's devastating toll, or to support lung cancer victims or raise money for a cure.

Why not?

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