Saturday, January 12, 2008

Internet is bad for you…again (but this time can kill you)

Two days ago the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain released a news piece presenting research showing that “[m]illions of Brits could be playing Russian Roulette with their health buying prescription-only medicines from rogue internet sites”, and using that strangely concluded data to scare people about Internet. The press release seems to quite correctly addresses the main issues involving the topic, like lack of knowledge of existing regulations from the consumers’ side, reaffirming that there are legal online pharmacies and that the public should be vigilant about buying from rogue establishments (there is a new pharmacy online logo to identify legitimate traders), but even if we forget that the numbers don't add up ("millions of Brits could be playing Russian Roulette", but the same study -carried out in a sample of only 1,950 adults- says that 2 million people buy drugs online and then says that in developed countries only 1% of the drugs are counterfeited, so where do the millions come from?) when the mic is given to RPSGB Director of Practice and Quality Improvement, David Pruce, things go bad, really bad in the form of a soon-to-be-classic opening line:

“The internet presents a real danger to people’s health.”

Excuse me?! So, the problem is not with the inexistence or lack of enforcement of regulations, or the very poor consumers’ education…the problem is Internet, that is not only the realm of terrorists and paedophiles, but now it also presents a real danger to people’s health…Taking into account that we are in the information society and the use of information and communication technologies have an important impact on productivity increases, I suggest that we put proper Internet knowledge and literacy as compulsory requirement to access senior positions in any organization…or at least keep those without a clue far from the press…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

really interesting!... do somebody nows more things why internet is bad?