Andrew Baron of RocketBoom

From MetaFilter, today:

Rocketboom Founder Fighting for Father's Life
October 14, 2008 8:36 AM

RocketBoom's co-founder Andrew Baron found out last week that his father had Multiple Myeloma, and likely less than 48 hours to live. Then a miracle occured. A drug that could save his father's life existed. However the drug was not approved by the FDA to be used this way. They sought and quickly got approval from the FDA. But now, the drug's manufacturer Biogen won't approve usage despite pleas to Biogen's president from Lance Burton, President Clinton, and others. Read this open letter and request for help from Andrew to learn what you can do to save his father's life.

Read Andrew Baron's open letter to James C. Mullen, CEO of Biotech.

Useless Pale Pink Crap

I'm sitting at Caribou Coffee right now, enjoying a large chai latte.

I like Caribou. They have good coffee. And free wifi.

They also have like a hundred pale pink mugs, tumblers, water bottles, and gift sets, not to mention the huge "be a part of the cure" poster that is to my right, and they ask every patron to purchase "Amy's Blend" -- a packaged coffee blend in honor of Amy Erickson, a Caribou employee who, at 33, died of breast cancer -- because ten percent of the proceeds will go to benefit the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.

At the counter, after being asked for the third time this week if I'd like to buy anything pale pink, I said, "You know that doesn't actually go toward finding the cure, right?"

The Roastmaster said pointedly, "Well, actually, it does," and then he recited something about how ten percent of the proceeds go to blah blah blah.

I said, "Yes, but the money isn't used for finding a cure. It's used mostly for overhead. And for paying administrative assistants and stuff."

He mumbled, "Well, I don't even know what it goes toward," and trailed off.

Happy "donating," everybody! Hope your homes are filled to the brim with tons of useless pale pink crap.



Wheee.

Unsubstantiated Claims and the Burden of Proof

When you make an unsubstantiated claim, things can get hairy. Asking a person to simply take you for your word is a lofty request when the claim is something outrageous. We, of this blog, are as skeptical about the world as anyone else, in fact, we're skepticalier... skepitakler... skepticler. Anyway, we have no trouble understanding people's reactions to a "We have the cure for cancer" claim. We hate to admit it, but if someone came up to us today claiming that he has found the cure for cancer, we probably wouldn't say, "Awesome, dude!" and high-five him. Unless we were being sarcastic. In which case, we most certainly would.

So the burden of proof is on whoever makes the claim. He could write a hundred blogs, print them out and glue them to people's faces, but only proof will, well, prove it.

But imagine he has actually proven it hundreds, maybe even thousands of times in individual cases. He now has to figure out how to show it to the public (you know, Joe Six-pack) in a way that is indisputable. In our experiment of telling friends that we have "the cure for cancer," we have been met mostly with rather harsh rebuff - which, again, we understand, but the reality is that when you ask your connected Manhattan friend if she knows of anyone who would even be interested in discussing it, her pitying "No, sweetie" is in itself indisputable, and when this attitude is repeated, indicative of some sort of public barometer.

So you start with something observable.

You've taken photographs of the cancer sites from the time they were diagnosed by a doctor, to when they were cured by your product. You have all the necessary statistical data, dates, etc. So you have someone build you a website and you want to put photos up. The before-during-after images will inevitably be accused of being edited in some way, which is, again, a show of understandable skepticism. The images are rather miraculous-looking: healthy, beautifully smooth skin in place of a previously rather repulsive cancer site. Even if most people were to accept the images as real, perhaps the result would be attributed to an undisclosed procedure: chemotherapy, radiation... luck?

What else do you do?

Besides enduring the necessary toxicology tests and the like, what would you do if you had the cure for cancer and wanted to prove it to the world on your own?

Things You Can Do On a Sunday

Things you can do on a Sunday:

1. Organize your sock drawer.

2. Watch Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL, in case you missed it.

3. Read/watch these things:

a. YouTube: "FDA Pharmaceutical Evil"
"Julian Whitaker, M.D. graduated from Dartmouth College and received his medical training at Emory University Medical School. He is a member of the American Medical Association and is board certified in anti-aging medicine. He is a tireless crusader against abuses by the FDA and a champion for medical freedom. Dr. Julian Whitaker talked about what he believes are abuses by pharmaceutical companies and the FDA, as well as alternative treatments for life threatening illnesses."

b. "FTC Launches Operation False Cures to Suppress Natural Cancer Remedies (opinion)"
"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today launched "Operation False Cures," a coordinated scheme to censor natural cancer remedies and financially destroy companies offering them for sale. In doing so, the FTC joins the criminals at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who currently operate an extortion racket that works by threatening health supplement companies with legal action unless they settle with the FDA by paying them million of dollars. Both the FTC and FDA work to protect the interests of the pharmaceutical companies by discrediting or outlawing competing natural cures that work better, more safely and more affordably than FDA-approved pharmaceuticals."

c. YouTube: Glenn Beck on DCA*



*No affiliation

What if You Had the Cure for Cancer?

What would you do if you had the cure for cancer?

What if you came up with a product that cures one of the most widespread diseases in the world (effective in all cases, legal, non-toxic, no side-effects... other than curing cancer)?

It's time to take the whatifyouhadthecure challenge, and pretend quite seriously that you have indeed discovered the cure for cancer.

What will you do?

Where will you go? Who will you tell?

You think it will be easy, right? "It works," you say, "so people all over the world will take notice, investors will come flocking, the product will go to market immediately and everyone will be cured!" Right? Right?

Wrong.

But don't take our word for it. Try it yourself. Seriously, try it.

We tend to trust the world to magically produce useful stuff. Nevermind if the people who come up with these things are normal people like you and me, who don't have every resource at their fingertips, let alone lots of money and a maybe the help of a public relations firm. Nevermind the fact that there are countless "cures" out there (some fake, some half-real, some real), their websites flooding the Internet, and that everyone in the world has been so numbed to the term "the cure for cancer" that they roll their eyes at the mere thought.

Yet, yours works. Without any adverse side-effects. And it works on all cancers. The product itself did not appear overnight, in fact, it took years to actually formulate. And it's expensive to make. But besides that, it works.

Have you called up a friend yet?

First you start with the obvious places, the cancer research organizations, the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, Livestrong Global Cancer Initiative, Katie Couric's NCCRA, the American Association for Cancer Research. But they tell you they're not interested in the cure, they're interested in research. Get it? They don't want the cure. None of them does. If you don't believe it, give them a call yourself.

Close friends believe you, because they know you're not crazy, but that's as far as it goes. Friends of friends don't believe you. Acquaintances don't believe you. You have photos, stories, but nobody believes you. Some of them say that if it were really real, it would have received national attention immediately. And since it hasn't, it isn't real.

You call up a few journalists. They don't believe you.

You call bigger news organizations. They don't believe you. Not interested.

In the meantime (meaning years later), you've treated hundreds of people with all sorts of different cancers. Skin cancer, primarily, but also breast cancer, brain cancer. You've watched tumors break up and, over a period of weeks, sometimes months, literally fall out of people's skin. They visit their physicians and are declared cancer-free. They are cured.

Still, the product is not on the market.

We aren't saying we have the cure. We aren't saying we don't have the cure, either. We're just posing a hypothetical question, which is, what would you do if you had the cure for cancer?