ARE DRUGS companies making us think diseases are more common and more serious than they really are? A senior executive quoted in the British Medical Journal believes so鈥攁nd he says it鈥檚 the marketing people who are responsible.
Fred Nadjarian, managing director of Roche Australia, says: 鈥淭he marketing people always beat [hype] these things up.鈥� He gives the example of social phobia, a disorder Roche planned to treat with the antidepressant moclobemide in the 1990s. A media release sponsored by Roche at the time announced that more than a million Australians suffered from this 鈥渟oul destroying鈥� psychiatric disorder. But Nadjarian now says social phobia cannot be that common, because when Roche tried to recruit people for clinical trials 鈥渨e just weren鈥檛 able to鈥�.
He goes on to say that his experience with this one condition highlights a much wider problem. 鈥淚f you added up all the statistics,鈥� he says, 鈥渨e all must have about 20 diseases. A lot of these things are blown out of all proportion.鈥�
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The BMJ says that his comments 鈥渁dd weight to fears that pharmaceuticals companies may be systematically trying to portray certain health conditions in ways that maximise their size and seriousness鈥攑artly to help build markets for new products鈥�. Go to for the full story.
WHAT IS going on at Google? First they run an April fool story about their technology depending on pigeons (Feedback, 13 April). Now they鈥檝e run a story about how to spell Britney Spears. Or rather, how not to. Go to and you will find a list of some 400 misspellings of the chanteuse鈥檚 name, complete with the number of times each error has been detected (and corrected) by Google鈥檚 spellchecker. When we looked, the most popular misspellings were Brittany Spears (40,134), Brittney Spears (36,315) and Britany Spears (24,342).
The variations on the singer鈥檚 first name go on and on, and you can pick your favourites: we like Breatney, Bitny, Britnewy and Brinny. But there鈥檚 something strange about the list that Google doesn鈥檛 comment on. Nobody, it seems, spelled Spears wrong.
A RECENT BT advertising campaign promises 鈥渇ree UK calls鈥�. To ram the point home, the adverts feature people with faces painted in the colours and patterns of the flags of the countries that make up the United Kingdom. So one advert has a man with a red cross on a white background, the flag of England, next to a man painted with the vertical green and white stripes of the flag of鈥�
But hang on a minute. The only flag we could find on that matched this pattern was the flag of Nigeria.
ONE MORE Internet business goes down the drain鈥攂ut then gets a reprieve. This particular online concern was selling second-hand urine, and has been banned from trading by the South Carolina supreme court. Kenneth Curtis, the entrepreneur behind the business, was making a living selling his urine at $69 a time to people trying to evade drugs tests.
South Carolina Chief Justice Jean Toal was unswayed by Curtis鈥檚 argument that the law was inhibiting his freedom of expression. But Curtis has dribbled past the opposition by moving his business to North Carolina, where there is no law banning the sale or donation of urine.
NASA publishes an 鈥淎stronomy Picture of the Day鈥� at The example for Monday 11 March was a photograph of the 100-metre Green Bank Telescope, about which NASA commments: 鈥淭he main dish is so large that it could house a football game, allowing it to hear even the faint murmurs of quasars located across the Universe.鈥�
Reader John Haythorne is puzzled. Why, he wants to know, does it need to house a football game in order to hear the faint murmur of quasars? He also worries about the restricted angles at which it could be pointed while so occupied.
ACCORDING to the Ananova online news service, researchers at the University of Michigan have found the part of the brain which makes losers keep gambling. Its name? The 鈥渕ug circuit鈥�.
IT SEEMS there鈥檚 always somebody with a silly question to post on an electronic mailing list. Here鈥檚 a sample from a mailing list devoted to dinosaurs: 鈥淚鈥檓 writing a story and I need to know if anyone has a psychological profile for the attitude of an adult female velociraptor?鈥�
Answers on a postcard, please.
A RECENT article in Scotland on Sunday had this to say: 鈥淭he Forestry Commission will this week give a Highland laird 拢2m to plant 2.5 million trees and create Scotland鈥檚 largest native woodland 鈥� This is not blanket afforestation, there will be no two trees in a straight line.鈥�
How will they manage that?
SEVERAL readers have told us about a curious warning in the Virgin mobile phone users鈥� guide. Among all the sensible advice comes this: 鈥淒o not put your mobile phone in a microwave oven; this may cause damage either to the oven or the phone.鈥�
Indeed. But who would want to do such a thing anyway?
READER Tony Gough works at a doctors鈥� surgery in Kent. He says they recently received a circular from a local National Health Service blood testing unit that seems to have come up with it鈥檚 own novel idea for meeting government waiting list targets. It stated that 鈥減atients may now phone themselves for appointments鈥�.
FINALLY, even the laws of physics need a day off sometimes. A notice displayed in the Cambridge University Engineering Department recently informed students that 鈥淭oday鈥檚 Electromagnetic Fields and Waves have been cancelled, due to illness.鈥�