Marketing science is the most complete of the social sciences, because it knows how to dissect the behavioral invariants of each class. A ridiculous painting, a yacht for port use, a psychoanalysis for a dog or a monstrous tattoo are sold with ever-renewed precision. She also knows how to exploit panurgism to the point of desocializing those who do not have the video game, the shoes, the beard or the automobile corresponding to their age or their status.
Medical marketing has more powerful levers, such as anguish and eternal life, which it handles with a virtuosity worthy of the nuncios and augurs of all obscurantisms.
A single example may suffice. On January 2, 2015, the magazine Science publishes a mathematical model that states that 65% of cancers are due to chance cell mutations and very little to the environment and individual behavior. They go so far as to speak of simple “bad luck”.
All news agencies are notified and prime time is immediately saturated with reporters unable to understand the story.
A year later, in January 2016, the magazine Nature publishes a study with opposite results: cancers essentially come from behavior and the environment. It has little echo, because no one likes to repeat that tobacco, UV rays, diesel fumes, pesticides, excess meat and processed foods are carcinogenic.
The science paper had asserted a long-known truth; the tissues most affected by cancer are those which have the highest rate of cell division (skin, bronchi, intestine). He had omitted to specify that if the mutations are hazardous, they are nonetheless subject to external carcinogens. He had “forgotten” the breast and the prostate. He had omitted to talk about inequalities in the face of cancer, for example, a worker is 10 times more likely to die of cancer before the age of 65. Chance is really cruel to workers! He also seems very cruel to smokers.
So why so many omissions and such a media hype for an article that is more mathematical than clinical?
In February 2018, Science publishes another article, a priori unrelated, promoting a new method of detecting cancer cells by a simple blood test. The media echo is important.
Two details challenge the few attentive observers. Both articles were sponsored by the foundation of the supertanker magnate, promoter of Amazon deforestation and proselytizer of all industries. The authors are almost the same and the majority of them are shareholders of the start-up that offers this test.
Ingenious upstream marketing, classic in medicine. If you want to circumvent the “bad luck” upstream of cancer, come and take our test. The gogos will certainly be more numerous than those of the yacht, the tattoos or the paradise.