Table 2.
Aftercare programme
| Designation | Strategy | Tactic |
|---|---|---|
| SAFE (Say Anything For a Euro) panel of “experts” | Provide generous research grants, first class travel, luxurious accommodations, exorbitant honorariums, and gargantuan ongoing “consultant” fees to “experts” who (surprise) favour your product, screening test, or programme | Get SAFE experts to generate the guidelines, write the editorials, pick the keynote speakers, referee for the key journals, etc |
| SCUM (Sick Celebrities to Use in the Media) | Hire stars of stage and screen, famous athletes, and washed up politicians who will “disease monger” and tout your product or screening test | Get them on to talk shows, into gossip magazines, and into the front lines of parades on any issue |
| PPCT (Pay the Piper and Call the Tune) | Give generous “journalism” awards for articles that monger your disease or praise your product in the lay media | Continue to feed media new diseases and products to push |
| RCAF (Rabid Citizens Against Facts) | Secretly fund “patients' action” groups to attack any counter-evidence that shows your product, programme, or screening test is useless or harmful | Denounce detractors with testimonials and threats |
| DISARM (DIScourage Arguments with Research Money) | Disarm your critics by funding an evaluation of your new screening test or health programme | Then stop the funding, ignore the results as out of date, or abandon the test or programme for a new, equally untested one |
| FYP (Foundation in Your Pocket) | Build beautiful headquarters and conference centres for health foundations | Smooth the way for infiltrating SAFE experts into their leadership and programme development |
| MTM (Move the Ministry) | Lobby to shift responsibility for the approval of new drugs and devices from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Industry | Shift the objective from healthy patients to healthy national economies |
| GFGC (Get the Fox to Guard the Chicken house) | Purchase a pharmaceutical benefits management organisation | Control the selection and purchasing of drugs while preserving the illusion of a market |
| BOSS (Bureau Of Secret Surveillance) | Buy confidential information from pharmacists as to exactly who is prescribing exactly what | Tailor drug reps' visits to focus on just the prescribing habits that need to be changed to your benefit |
| SOW (Save/Sacrifice Our Workers) | Threaten to move your product development and manufacture to another country | Launch media and lobbying blitzes that exaggerate how many jobs will be lost if you leave (see cigarette manufacturers' ploys) |
| SHARKS (Striking Horror And Retreat through Killer Solicitors) | Hire all the really good lawyers | Use them to threaten nay-sayers, members of drug review boards, etc with frivolous but expensive libel lawsuits. Suppress negative health technology assessment reports until you've met your sales targets |