BAYEREveryone Is Expected To Obey The Law
Bayer's got a headache, and aspirin ain't going to help.
Earlier this year, the company pled guilty to defrauding the federal government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare payments.
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And it's not just stealing with Bayer.
Check this out:
The Times of London reported earlier this year that the giant pharmaceutical company used students to test a "highly hazardous" pesticide linked to serious disorders.
Bayer CropScience, of Mannheim, Germany, paid the students, mostly from Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, about $450 each to consume the pesticide, according to the report by Times medical correspondent Lois Rogers. Experts are worried that cash-strapped students are vulnerable targets for researchers.
BRIGHTHOUSEBrave New World
"We are a novel form of consumer consultancy that leverages scientific knowledge about how the human brain motivates consumer behavior to deliver strategic insights that are intended to enhance the relationship between the consumer and the product, brand and company. Our goal is to define the neural basis of behaviors that are of specific interest to strategic business decision making, as well as of generic interest to the field of neuroscience. We are not interested in telling companies what people think about their products, but rather how they think. Our focus is decidedly from the consumer perspective with the direct intent to influence the behavior of companies, rather than consumers."
Or, as the company said a bit more directly in a 2002 news release: "The Thought Sciences team uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a safe and non-invasive technique, to identify patterns of brain activity that reveal how a consumer is actually evaluating a product, object or advertisement. Thought Sciences marketing analysts use this information to more accurately measure consumer preference, and then apply this knowledge to help marketers better create products and services and to design more effective marketing campaigns."
Winning advertising approaches spark activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. This shows an instinctive identification with a brand or product. There may be interest and desire for a product if activity appears elsewhere in the brain, but not the same unbridled identification. Or at least that's the theory.
Says Gary Ruskin of the Portland, Oregon-based Commercial Alert, "It sounds like something that could have happened in the former Soviet Union, for purposes of behavior control. Yet it is happening right here in America."
Other companies listed:BOEING
Soaring Through Turbulence
CLEAR CHANNEL
Poor Character
DIEBOLD
Pulling Its Own Political Levers
HALLIBURTON
The Cheney-Industrial Complex
HEALTHSOUTH
Getting Away Scot Free
INAMED
Basic Questions Not Answered
MERRILL LYNCH
Don't Trust Them
SAFEWAY
Unhealthy Demands
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03december/dec03corp1.html