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Introduction to the Reader’s Digest
I have been reading the Reader’s Digest, that bastion of American values, for several decades now. I love the jokes. But over the years I have noticed a very consistent pattern. It seems that every issue has gobs of pharmaceutical ads, every issue has at least one article glorifying some doctor, or at least the medical profession, and they never talk about alternative medicine, except about the most basic nutrition, which is pretty harmless to the pharmaceutical industry.
Just for example, in the June, 2003 issue, the following pharmaceutical ads appear:
- Lipitor (Pfizer) – 4 pages (these types of ads generally include 1 or 2 pages of information and warnings – but they have to pay for these pages!)
- Prostate (Real Health Laboratories) – 1 page
- Advair (GlaxoSmithKline) – 3 pages
- Diabet Aid (Del Pharmaceuticals) – 1 page
- Zyrtec (Pfizer) – 2 pages
- Plavix (Bristol-Myers Squibb Company) – 3 pages
- Nexium (AstraZeneca) – 2 pages
- Effexor XR (Wyeth) – 3 pages
- Clarinex (Schering) – 3 pages
- Synvisc (Wyeth) – 2 pages plus another 1/2 page
- Aventis (Aventis Pharmaceuticals) – 1 page
That is 25 1/2 pages of space paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. Do you think that would buy some bias in the Reader’s Digest? It seems that the pattern I have observed over the years proves that it does.
There were also three articles glorifying orthodox medicine: a regular feature called: Medical Update, an article: Saving Michael Bowen, and the book section: The Unlikely Gift.
There was also an article on Vitamin D, which was actually quite good, and even talks about preventing colon cancer and possibly other types of cancer. With the massive number of people taking vitamins now, simple nutrition articles are almost mandated these days in the mass media. The article also glorifies the National Cancer Institute, as if they were a government agency with integrity. They had to slip that in.
The Reader’s Digest Book: Heart Healthy For Life
As an example of how periodicals suppress the truth and lead people astray, I wish to talk about a case study regarding a book written by the Reader’s Digest. This book is not about cancer, it is about preventing heart disease.
Enter Linus Pauling, two time Nobel Prize winner. He and his associates, and a Dr. Rath, developed a protocol for preventing heart disease. It was, and is, a very successful prevention protocol. But, as always, Linus forgot to include Big Pharma profits in his program. Oops. His program has been known about for years by a handful of people.
I quote from an internet site:
With vitamin C consumption already on the rise, after Nobelist Linus Pauling’s book on Vitamin C was published in 1970, the Linus Pauling Institute reports (and www.quackwatch.com confirms), that average vitamin C consumption in the US increased 300%! (According to a biography (Pauling in His Own Words) Pauling wrote his 1970 lay book because of the false information about vitamin C, and other vitamins, being disseminated by so-called Medical “authorities” through the Media at that time.) As the above chart and data indicate, total CVD mortality peaked between 1950 and 1970, with coronary disease peaking close to 1970. However, during the decade of the 1970s, deaths from Coronary Heart Disease began a steep decline. We attribute this staggering 30%-40% decline to Pauling’s book. The United States was the only developed country to experience such a decline. This is not a statistical fluke. We believe these facts are connected and not merely coincidental. The decline in heart disease, matched with the increase awareness and intake of Vitamin C, strongly supports the Pauling/Rath Unified Theory.
http://internetwks.com/pauling/mortality.html
Because of the book on the common cold, Vitamin C consumption increased 300%. Was it a coincidence that heart disease decreased dramatically after the book came out? As the above author argues, it was not a coincidence.
With this statistic in mind, Reader’s Digest wrote a book on heart disease called: Heart Healthy for Life. It was a book on preventing heart disease, so of course they devoted one or two chapters to the Linus Pauling prevention program – right? Not! They devoted one page to natural or alternative medicine prevention plans. This page doesn’t mention Linus Pauling or his prevention protocol.
This is the opening line of the one page on alternative medicine (1/3 of page 96 and 2/3 of page 97):
No sooner do researchers spot a substance in food that seems to fight disease than some clever entrepreneur begins to put it into pills or potions.
Right off the bat, in the first sentence, all alternative medicine people are stereotyped as “clever entrepreneurs” who make witch’s potions. Gee, I always thought it was Big Pharma that made the big bucks and worshiped money. The alternative medicine people are put in the same category as the witch in the Wizard of Oz.
But it gets worse. After quoting a poorly designed study on Vitamin E, the book concludes there is inadequate evidence to judge the effectiveness of alternative prevention plans.
The book totally ignores that heart disease took a nosedive after people increased their consumption of Vitamin C. While Vitamin E is in the Linus Pauling prevention protocol, it is not one of the three main nutrients in the program. The Reader’s Digest book did not mention Vitamin C, L-Proline or L-Lysine, which are the three main supplements in the Linus Pauling/Dr. Rath prevention program. Nor did the study they quoted use any of these supplements. What a shock.
Furthermore, in the study the dosage of Vitamin E that was given the participants was ludicrously small. It is also almost certain that the Vitamin E used was dl-alpha tocopherol (synthetic), rather than d-alpha tocopherol (natural). The study was designed by people who had no idea what they were doing, or it was designed by people who wanted to discredit Linus Pauling, but yet it is the main study the Reader’s Digest article depended on when it talked about alternative medicine.
But it gets worse. This same book has an entire chapter on the wonders of prescription drugs for the heart (Chapter 10). It has another chapter on how wonderful heart surgery is, no doubt it is something everyone should have (Chapter 11). It has yet another chapter to convince you to run to your doctor as fast as possible to see if you have heart problems (Chapter 3). Of course they also talk about all the highly profitable “theories” of heart disease, such as cholesterol.
Three chapters on orthodox medicine (actually it is far more than that, but these are entire chapters dedicated to orthodox medicine), one page on alternative medicine, and that page depended on an absurd study that had only a small part of the Linus Pauling therapy! When you see all the advertising by the pharmaceutical companies in the Reader’s Digest magazines, are you surprised?
Am I accusing someone in Reader’s Digest of intentionally suppressing natural prevention measures in order to get more advertising money for Reader’s Digest? Because of the complex rules a media company must follow when dealing with alternative medicine (in order to maintain their pharmaceutical industry advertising dollars), and because Reader’s Digest has a long history of following those rules perfectly, it is virtually impossible that Reader’s Digest coincidentally follows those rules decade after decade. Thus, considering the opening remark about alternative medicine, and the massive amount of support for orthodox medicine over the years, then yes, I am saying that someone in Reader’s Digest knew the rules and made sure they were followed. Unfortunately, Reader’s Digest does represent American values, or should I say: corporate values.
There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
John Swinton (1829-1901) pre-eminent New York journalist & head of the editorial staff at the New York Times. Quoted one night between 1880-1883.
Quoted by Upton Sinclair in his 1919 book:
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism, page 400
Even though Upton Sinclair was famous by 1919, because he was criticizing corruption in the media, he had to self-publish this book.