Archive for the ‘Cancer society’ Category

Myths and Facts About Generic Drugs

November 12th, 2009 admin

You hear about it all the time. Some people say generics are just as good as their brand name counterparts. Others say they have tried both and there is a clear difference. So who is right? What are the truths about generic drugs and what are the myths? It is time to answer these questions once and for all.

Generic Drugs Do Not Work As Well As Brand Name Drugs

This is a myth. Research has shown many times that generic drugs produce results that are just as good as their brand name alternatives. This is all there is to it.

Generic Drugs Have Lower Standards To Meet The Brand Name Drugs

Again this is simply not true. Generic drugs have to meet the same FDA standards that brand name drugs do. Every criterion that a brand name drug has to meet also has to be met by the generic version of that drug.

Generic Drugs Cost Less Because They Don’t Work As Well

You have already learned that studies show that generic drugs work as well as brand name drugs so this claim is ludicrous. Generic drugs cost less but have been shown to work as well as their brand name alternatives. With brand names you pay more just because their manufacturers charge more.

Generic Drugs Are Not As Safe As Brand Name Drugs

Many people are worried that if they switch to a generic drug or if they start with generics as opposed to brand name drugs that they are risking inferior products. Even beyond the main active ingredient many consumers believe that other components of generic drugs make them somehow unsafe. This is not true. Side effects and adverse reactions are closely monitored for all types of drugs.

Generic Drugs Take Longer To Work

This is another quality question concerning generic drugs. In fact, generic drugs contain the same amount of active ingredients and work at the same speed as brand name drugs. This is another case where the quality of generic drugs is called into question even though studies show no difference in their overall effectiveness or in the time it takes them to work.

If Your Prescription Is For A Brand Name Drug Then You Cannot Take A Generic Drug

Your doctor may have given you a prescription for a brand name drug when a generic could work just as well. Ask your doctor if there is a generic option that could work in place of the brand name drug. Often times there will be.

Generic Drugs Cost Less In Canada

Actually, generic drugs cost less in the US. For some reason, people think that if something is harder to get then it must be better or cheaper. In truth, the cheaper generic drugs are available right here.

In the end, generic drugs get a bad reputation because of all the myths floating around out there. Many people feel that if something costs less then it cannot be as good as something that costs more. This is faulty reasoning. Sometimes manufacturers of drugs or other products only charge more because they believe you will pay more.

T. Rheinecker blogs about how to choose among nurse practitioner online programs.

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How Do Non-Profits Handle SEM? Straight Talk With The American Cancer Society

September 15th, 2009 admin

I recently had the opportunity to discuss SEO/SEM with a non-profit organization. The conversation didn’t start with SEO/SEM but I got to thinking – how does a non-profit do SEO/SEM?

Having been in the industry a while I have a pretty good idea what the going rate is for professional SEM and I find it hard to believe that a non-profit firm would invest in it, knowing that in some cases it’s hard to measure.

What you are about to read is an interview with the Director of Online Communications for the American Cancer Society High Plains Division.

Let’s get the formalities out of the way. What is your name and title?

My name is David Neff and I am the Director of Online Communications for The American Cancer Society High Plains Division

What does the director of online communications do?

Basically, my job is to manage all the website design and maintenance including any upgrades as well as any email campaigns we do. This includes any e-commerce that we get into.

Do you do any type of search engine positioning on any of your websites?

Not really. Besides submitting to DMOZ and Google we don’t actively pursue any search engine marketing at this point. Most of our promotions are done through print ads, Internet ads like Google Adwords, banners and stuff like that. We don’t proactively go out and position.

Now, we’ve talked before and you mentioned that the American Cancer Society has a few sites, including some which you are more responsible for. Why doesn’t the Cancer Society invest in positioning?

It’s not on our priority list at this point. We are quite busy promoting our sites through the offline promotion that I mentioned earlier.

Is there a reason that SEM isn’t a priority?

Decisions like that are made at a higher level and it’s not well known how it works. There is no real “baby steps” that you can take to get into it. In fact they [management] probably don’t even know about it that much. It’s really not on [their] radar screen.

I’ve dealt with large organizations like yours and I’ve found that usually in order to get an SEM campaign off the ground there needs to be an “SEM Evangelist” on staff. One person that is the spearhead behind the campaign. Has there been anyone in your office trying to push for it?

Not at the moment but I’m seeing results from stuff I’ve talked to you about and the early results are quite impressive. Also, other media I encounter has had me considering it. Maybe 2006 will be the year to start pushing for an SEM campaign.

You mentioned earlier that you do other Internet advertising. What type of Internet advertising do you do for the American Cancer Society?

We’ve done banner advertising on a PDA tool and a ton of the major sites. Finding PDA things that doctors read like http://www.webmd.com and http://www.pdamd.com. We actually contacted http://www.motricity.com as well and we’ve done a lot of ads on a whole bunch of partner sites for a free product, yet we had to pay full price for those ads.

Next, we are planning to sell a golf pass to get you discounted green fees no matter where you golf across Texas. So we will be placing ads for those soon as well. We will also be placing Google ads for these when the timing is right.

As a search engine marketer I know that Google ads are generally pretty good traffic tools. How effective have they been for you in the past?

The Google ads have been really great for us in the past – lots of clicks over the holidays. They have been better than banner ads in some aspects.

What would those aspects be?

Rate of return. We’ve found that some banner ads generated a lot of traffic and interest in the past. We did notice, though, that during the holidays we got lots of views but not as many sales.

So what you are saying is that you are getting better conversion rates on Google ads?

Yes definitely.

Who looks after your Google program?

(Chuckles) I do unfortunately.

Why do you say “unfortunately”? Is it a difficult job?

No it’s not difficult, it’s just that I only check on it when I get a bill because I have too much other stuff to do. We just don’t have the manpower to properly manage it.

How did you go about choosing keywords for your Google campaign?

We got together in the communications department and sat down and and just started searching. We used the words we thought people would use to search for our product and just made a list.

Then we used the Google sandbox to help with other keyword suggestions and from there we put our campaign together.

So you are satisfied with Google. Is that the only paid advertising engine you use? Or have you/do you use Yahoo?

No, we haven’t had time to investigate or anything like that. I’d like to at some point, but like I said: I’m the only one doing it and I just don’t have the time right now.

How many sites do you look after?

I have nine in all that I look after.

And are all the sites you maintain Cancer related?

No. We have a blogging site called http://www.quitnowblog.org which is for college aged kids. It helps them with quitting smoking and all the pains they go through to quit. The second site is http://www.schoolhealth.info/ – We’ve just redesigned the site and are ready to relaunch it. With that site it is used to get parents involved in kids schools to get kids more healthy. And then there are a bunch of others.

So how are these sites doing?

We’re getting a ton of response to the quit now blog. It seems to be very popular with the target audience we are trying to reach.

With all these sites, do you do cross promotion?

Yes, definitely. When we do a quitnow blog and print campaign for example, we ensure that and print material such as brochures and ads match the site.

For another site we do, http://www.texasgolfpass.com/, it too has been redesigned and matched to posters, brochures and so on. We definitely try and do complete campaigns to ensure the themes are consistent throughout.

So, do you feel they’ve been successful using this branded approach across multiple media?

Definitely. We’ve really stepped it up to ensure that our websites match our print campaigns. It is one of our strong points right now.

What would you like to do differently with your online campaigns?

The main thing would be to investigate Yahoo ads and everyone else out there besides Google but my main challenge is that I don’t have enough time to do that.

I’d also like to investigate search engine optimization but I need to find a way to sell it to management. I need a one page “This is why you need to do SEO” that I can take to them and show them that we need to do more.

Do you think that your management is resistant to SEO?

No, not really. It’s just an education thing. I need to find a way to show them why it is so important and I don’t know where to start to show them at a non-technical level.

Thank you for your time David, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. One more thing, if there is one thing anyone in our community can do for The American Cancer Society, what would it be?

Gosh, I don’t know. I know we do need help but there are so many areas we could use it. Being a non-profit group, our budgets are always tight. I guess just help us get more well-known. We have all these sites we use to help spread healthy messages, and at the same time we have others we use to help raise money. Any help that we can get for these would be greatly appreciated.

As he said, if there is anything you can do to help out this worthwhile cause, they could really use it. Whether it’s supplying some links to the smaller sites like the golf pass sites or quit now site, if you can use your SEM experience to help get the word out they would really appreciate it.

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Cancer – One in Two Men and One in Three Women Will Get It. What to Do?

September 15th, 2009 admin

There is nothing that puts more fear in people than a diagnosis of Cancer. Statistically speaking, we now have one in two chances (male) or one in three chances (female) of getting cancer before the end of our life (American Cancer Society statistics for the year 2003). At the beginning of the 20th century, statistics gave us one in 500 chances of getting cancer.

All cancers considered, if you have a primary cancer (in one location only) the most optimistic statistics only give you 28% chances of recovery. If you have metastatic cancer (in more than one location) then your chances of recovery are 0.1% or in other words, one chance in one thousand to recover – (statistics from Dr Philip Binzel book “Alive and Well” published by American Media).

The news is bleak to say the least. However, as we will see later on, this need not be the case.

Ever since I can remember, I have read newspaper articles, heard claims on TV or radio, reporting new “wonder” cures on the war against cancer. Victory against this terrible disease was, according to these reports, just around the corner. Why is it then that so many people are still dying from this disease? Are the 600 UK cancer charities (The largest UK charities being Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Cancer Research Campaign and Institute of Cancer Research) lying to us?

The “American Cancer Society” is the richest charity in the world. All debts paid, it would still have half a billion dollars in the bank!

Linus Pauling, the winner of two Nobel prizes, seemed to think so when he said: “Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.”

What is Cancer?

Modern researchers have for many years been exploring the virus connection at a cost of billions of dollars and pounds. The pitiful result is that “no cancer that was incurable 25 years ago is curable today and that, for the most common cancers that kills 90% of patients today chemotherapy is no better than snake oil” (The Cancer Handbook. What Doctors don’t tell you publication. By Lynne Taggart).

When you are diagnosed with cancer, what the doctor is really saying is that you have one or several tumours in your body and that at least one of the tumours contains some cancer cells. They see the tumours as the enemy that has to be fought and destroyed and all their efforts are directed against eradicating the tumours.

What is a tumour though? A tumour is only a symptom; it shows that something has gone wrong in your body and that your immune system is no longer available to fight it. Many researchers claim that we all have tumours in our body and that several times in our life we get cancer. However, we do not all die from cancer. The reason is that our body’s defence mechanism spring into action when a tumour is formed and gets rid of it or at least neutralises it. If cancer cells are beginning to form, these are killed off by our immune system and all is back to normal.

However if for some reason our immune system is severely deficient and we are unable to fight off the formation of the cancerous cells, then disease spreads.

What needs to be done to fight the tumour is not so much to remove it (surgery), burn it (radiation) or poison it (chemotherapy) as all these will weaken our immune system (damaging both our liver and kidneys to a point where it is difficult for our body to fight off any health problem). But to find out why the tumour formed in the first place and remove the cause.

Fighting it according to Dr Binzel is no good, our body now has in its memory the recipe to form tumours and uses the negative ingredients we feed it with to form new tumours and it will rarely stop doing so unless we remove the cause. The lack of positive ingredients (Vitamins, minerals and essential enzymes) to fight off the tumour is just as important.

Let me compare this reasoning with the simple example of a tooth infection. There is no point in taking painkillers to fix the tooth. I grant you that they will probably relieve the pain but I profess that they will not cure the tooth. What needs to be done is to get rid of the infection with antibiotics or have the tooth removed.

What do cancer cells feed on?

Several factors such as diet, negative emotions/ stress and environmental toxins are usually responsible for the development of cancer. Dietary speaking, cancer cells need food to survive. Dr Otto Warburg received the Nobel Prize for scientifically proving that cancer feed from the fermentation of sugar:

“in cancer cells [the feeding] is replaced by an energy-yielding reaction of the lowest living forms; namely, a fermentation of glucose” (quoted in prevention – May 1968).

According to Macrobiotic medicine theory, cancer cells also feed on animal protein (all types of meat, especially chicken but also very much on dairy, eggs etc..)

Detecting cancer

Currently, surgeons often perform a biopsy when cancer is suspected. A biopsy is a way of extracting a quantity of matter from a tumour and test it to see if it is cancerous. The problem with this method is that if the tumour is cancerous and the tumour is punctured, there is a definite risk that the cancerous liquid will spread to surrounding cells and spread the cancer around the body (Roger Delin – medical analyst – Philippines.

Breast cancer is often diagnosed using a mammogram. The main manufacturer of mammographic equipment is a company called “Smarlight Mammographics”. They state: “We expected error rates to be around 30%, but the wide range of results (10%-90%) was an eye-opener.” Amazing admission from the largest manufacturer of what is considered as the ultimate test to detect breast cancer. Unbelievable !

It is interesting to learn that autopsies have shown that many undetected cancers were present in the body of people who died from other causes. This makes a mockery of medical statistics and confirms that in fact a substantial number of cancers are never detected and do not obligatorily cause death.

A Swedish study has revealed that 15% of major cancers were not revealed before death and around half were of a type normally considered fatal (ref: wddty).

Modern approach and progress on cancer

The modern approach to treat cancer is surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormones and immunotherapy. The percentage of oncologists (cancer doctors) who would not participate in chemotherapy trials is an alarming 75% (due to its toxicity). (John Robbins

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