Half Of Americans Believe In Medical Conspiracy Theories
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/19/291405689/half-of-americans-believe-in-medical-conspiracy-theories"...
Half of Americans subscribe to medical conspiracy theories, with more than one-third of people thinking that the Food and Drug Administration is deliberately keeping natural cures for cancer off the market because of pressure from drug companies, a survey finds.
Twenty percent of people said that cellphones cause cancer — and that large corporations are keeping health officials from doing anything about it. And another 20 percent think doctors and the government want to vaccinate children despite knowing that vaccines cause autism.
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Oliver was studying political conspiracy theories when he realized that quite a few of them involved medical care, including vaccine avoidance and a vote rejecting water fluoridation in Portland, Ore.
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Three other theories were each supported by 12 percent of people surveyed. They were that the CIA deliberately infected African-Americans with HIV, that genetically modified foods are a conspiracy to reduce population worldwide and that companies use water fluoridation to cover up pollution.
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I know this has been discussed before, but it seems like these conspiracy theories keep popping up, again and again.
Anyway...
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here's just one of many very real conspiracies that I am referring to:
Health-care costs and the ‘moral hazard’ problem
An article posted Sunday on the Los Angeles Times’s Web site reports that two new, potential blockbuster drugs to treat hepatitis C, Sovaldi and Olysio, will be priced as high as $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a 12-week treatment cycle.
Given the incidence of the illness, these prices could cost patients, insurers and taxpayers billions of dollars a year for California patients alone. This story illustrates one problem – although certainly not the only one – with the U.S. health-care system that makes it by far the most expensive in the world. (We spend about 18 percent of economic output on medical care.)
In the United States, private health insurance sometimes excludes from coverage certain categories of care but essentially covers all treatments with any medical efficacy for illnesses that are covered, without any consideration of cost effectiveness. Specifically, almost all insurance policies cover “medically necessary” care, a term usually left undefined. If the insurance company refuses to cover a treatment recommended by a patient’s physician, the law of at least 44 states provides the patient with the right to appeal the decision to an external review panel independent of the insurer. In almost all cases, the standard that the reviewer applies is entirely a medical one – i.e., whether the treatment is expected to provide any medical benefit – with no hint of concern for whether the likely medical benefits are justified in light of the treatment’s cost, at least in the absence of a lower-cost treatment option that is equally effective to the recommended one.
Under the Affordable Care Act, more people will have private health insurance coverage, and new breadth-of-coverage requirements (when finally enforced!) will mean patients will find that their policies exclude fewer categories of treatment. These reforms are net improvements, in my opinion at least, but they will exacerbate the moral hazard problem that plagues our health-care system and drives up costs.
It is easy to see what kind of incentives this system provides: Patients who have low-deductible, low co-payment insurance will demand any and all pharmaceuticals and other treatments that promise any benefit at all, net of the risks and side effects of the treatment, without regard to cost. This is a standard “moral hazard” problem. And pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers and health-care providers will price their products and services accordingly. Especially when the product is under patent, this system provides precious little in the way of a check on the seller’s pricing power.
GMO! GMO! GO MONSANTO GO GO GO!
I love the propaganda! 
What you just did was show that science actually works, especially since many of the items on that list actually occur in nature, all by themselves. Who knew nature was a "corporate sponsored scientist!?" In the case of conspiracy theories that are pushed, the science usually works, but now we may be facing a time where "activists" do more harm than good as they push nonsense upon the public.
Well, it worked.
Old mascots never die, but they do hang on much too long!
Science isn't "sexy."
Those that present the conspiracy theories are often charismatic. They bring a lot of theater to their skillfully crafted presentations (as well as "glitz and glamor"
. The "information" presented has more in common with a "slick" sales pitch, than educational material.
"Information" is presented in easy to understand ways (without regard to fact and high regard for fiction) .... requiring no prior knowledge or understanding on the part of the receiver.
Scientific information is narrow in spectrum, often presented in a "flat" (non-entertaining manner) and requires a certain sub-set of prior knowledge.
Couple this with distrust of large corporate entities (and our own government) and a health care system where access and quality are inextricably linked to wealth (ability to pay for the services), the charlatans promoting pseudoscience/ quackery are in a prime position to influence people.
How long did the US Government keep the lid on that one?
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/06/tob2-j13.html