Should Drug Companies Be Advertising to Consumers?

TV ads push consumer demand for prescription meds

Paula Span 

Tamar Abrams had a lousy couple of years in 2022 and ’23. Both her parents died; a relationship ended; she retired from communications consulting. She moved from Arlington, Virginia, to Warren, Rhode Island, where she knew all of two people.

“I was kind of a mess,” recalled Abrams, 69. Trying to cope, “I was eating myself into oblivion.” As her weight hit 270 pounds and her blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose levels climbed, “I knew I was in trouble health-wise.”

What came to mind? “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic!” — the tuneful ditty from television commercials that promoted the GLP-1 medication for diabetes. The ads also pointed out that patients who took it lost weight.

Abrams remembered the commercials as “joyful” and sometimes found herself humming the jingle. They depicted Ozempic-takers cooking omelets, repairing bikes, playing pickleball — “doing everyday activities, but with verve,” she said. “These people were enjoying the hell out of life.”

So, just as such ads often urge, even though she had never been diagnosed with diabetes, she asked her doctor if Ozempic was right for her.

Small wonder Abrams recalled those ads. Novo Nordisk, which manufactures Ozempic, spent an estimated $180 million in direct-to-consumer advertising in 2022 and $189 million in 2023, according to MediaRadar, which monitors advertising.

By last year, the sum — including radio and TV commercials, billboards, and print and digital ads — had reached an estimated $201 million, and total spending on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs topped $9 billion, by MediaRadar’s calculations.

Novo Nordisk declined to address those numbers.

Should it be legal to market drugs directly to potential patients? This controversy, which has simmered for decades, has begun receiving renewed attention from both the Trump administration and legislators.

Trump is actively destroying The Moral Basis of Civilization

Civilized societies do not accept that the powerful should be able to attack the weak

Robert Reich

“We are just getting started,” Trump’s secretary of “war,” Pete Hegseth, said yesterday, adding that the attacks on Iran will escalate, with “death and destruction all day long.”

So far more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in Iran, according to human rights monitors, including 180 children, most of them schoolgirls aged 7 to 12 years old who were killed when a missile directly hit their school.

Wars can be morally justifiable if they are necessary to protect a nation’s people, but Trump has failed to make the case that this war is necessary. His allegation that Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon has been rejected by the International Atomic Energy Agency and much of the intelligence community.

As I have noted before, the moral purpose of civilized society is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Otherwise, we’d be permanently immersed in a brutish war in which only the fittest and most powerful could survive.

Give him the f***ing prize so he'll stop

About as qualified as Kristi Noem was

All the Right Moves Needed to Save These Endangered Whales

Trump is lifting speed limits for boats traveling through sensitive whale habitat

By Frank Carini / ecoRI News columnist

Once they were tagged with the “right” label, their future instantly dimmed. These marine mammals got their white name because they floated when killed, making it easier to retrieve their carcasses.

There are less than 400 left, and they are traveling greater distances to find food, habitat, and mates. We are stressing them out, and special interests continue to delay efforts to help these leviathans survive.

The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, and it’s all because of us. By the early 1890s, commercial whalers had hunted this magnificent creature to the brink of extinction. We can’t live in harmony with the natural world, or with each other.

Late last year researchers discovered that a North Atlantic right whale sighted in Massachusetts waters was the same animal reported off Ireland in 2024. It was called an “extraordinary connection” that showed the whale traveled some 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.

While conducting an aerial survey in November, observers from the Provincetown, Mass.-based Center for Coastal Studies sighted a North Atlantic right whale off the coast of Boston. Scientists in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life confirmed that the marine mammal had previously only been seen in Donegal Bay, Ireland, in July 2024.

There are rare instances of known North Atlantic right whales from the western Atlantic traveling to the eastern Atlantic and back, but this appears to be the first documented case of a right whale initially sighted in the eastern North Atlantic and later sighted in the western North Atlantic, according to the Center for Coastal Studies and the New England Aquarium. The 2025 sighting suggests that historical North Atlantic right whale habitat may still hold value and that right whales continue to search widely for suitable habitat.

While whaling is no longer a threat, this baleen whale species has never recovered to its pre-whaling numbers, and human interaction still presents the greatest danger to their existence.

A new nasal spray vaccine could stop bird flu at the door — blocking infection, reducing spread, and helping head off the next pandemic.

This Vaccine Stops Bird Flu Before It Reaches the Lungs

By WashU Medicine

Since first appearing in the United States in 2014, H5N1 avian influenza, widely known as bird flu, has steadily expanded its reach. The virus has spread from wild birds into farm animals and, more recently, to humans. Since 2022, 

more than 70 people in the U.S. have been infected, including two deaths. Because the virus continues to circulate widely among animals, scientists warn that it has ongoing opportunities to adapt in ways that could allow it to spread more easily between people, raising fears of a future pandemic.

A Nasal Vaccine Designed to Stop Infection Early

To reduce that risk, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis developed a nasal spray vaccine aimed at stopping the virus at its point of entry. When tested in hamsters and mice, the vaccine triggered strong immune responses and successfully prevented infection after exposure to H5N1.

One major concern with bird flu vaccines is that immunity from previous seasonal flu infections or vaccinations could weaken their effectiveness. The research team addressed this issue directly and found that their nasal vaccine remained highly protective even in animals with prior flu immunity.

The findings were published today (January 30) in Cell Reports Medicine.

Rhode Island (including Charlestown) continues to have an affordable housing crisis

Rhode Island continues to fall short in providing affordable homes for low-income renters

A new report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) finds that there are just 54 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income households in Rhode Island.

The report, The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, also reveals a national shortage of 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes for extremely low-income renter households – those with incomes at or below the poverty level or 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater – resulting in just 35 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households nationwide.

That’s a gap of 23,222 affordable and available rental homes for extremely low-income renters in Rhode Island.

These findings come amidst ongoing attacks on federal housing resources.

“The annual Gap report reflects what too many Rhode Islanders are living every day: rents that stretch paychecks beyond their limits and impossible choices between housing, food, medicine, and other basic needs,” said Melina Lodge, Executive Director of the Housing Network of Rhode Island.¹ “We are still not producing enough homes affordable to residents with the lowest incomes, leaving families without the stability they need to thrive. At a time when federal housing resources are increasingly uncertain, we must recommit to reversing decades of underinvestment and restrictive land use policies and expand deeply affordable housing so people can count on a safe, stable place to call home.”

What do you give a malignant narcissist who has more than enough of everything?

A New Raft of Trump Awards™, Buildings, and Lifetime Achievements

Paul Josephson for Common Dreams

   

At his February 2026 State of the Union address, Great Leader Donald Trump was atypically modest about his achievements as president in his second term. He has conquered inflation; ended eight wars; taken $1 off the price of gas; created jobs as never before; conquered unemployment; ridded the cities of criminals and immigrants; secured $18 trillion in investments with highly effective tariff wars; and created a peace board with a modest $1 billion entry fee.

Of course, none of these claims is true. But the president should be honored for his hard work and delusionary beliefs. President Trump loves nothing more than hearing his name and seeing it affixed, preferably in gold color, to apartment and office buildings, casinos, and consumer products. 

The board of trustees of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, most of whom Trump appointed and whose chairman is Donald, voted to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center. But more work is to be done. The following buildings, objects, and programs are just a first cut of the most important honors.

• The Trump Constitution. Russian President Vladimir Putin promulgated one to make him president for life…
• The Trump and Genesis “I Can’t Dance” Ball Room. For $1 million, you can have a lifetime “I Can’t Dance” membership.
• Trump Archive and Bathroom. At Mar-a-Lago. Where he read classified documents, refused to return them, and washed his hands. Apparently.
• Donald Trump Prisons. Geo Group, with 100 facilities and a total of 80,000 “beds” (or, as they are usually called “cells”), has become the second-largest contractor for Trump’s mass incarceration campaign, with a 700% increase in profits since 2024. Private prisons gave Trump over $1 million toward his reelection. And Trump is a felon. Trump deserves a prison or two.
• The Trump Penn Station, Washington International Airport, and Gateway Tunnel. Trump said he would unfreeze roughly $16 billion in federal funding if Democrats support the name changes.
• Trump Toll Booths. Fifty percent of tunnel tolls go to the Trump Organization through booths emblazoned in gold paint as “Trump Little Towers.”
• The Trump Kennedy-Trump Center Drag Gala. To headline the opening of the 2026-27 season. It will include a reprise of the year 2000 drag performance of Trump with Rudy Guiliani. Special guest JD Vance dressed in drag as he was at Yale Law School. The Gala will be held monthly since schedule permits: Dozens of artists cancelled their performances.
• Trump and Sons Gaza Resort. For $2 million you can name a Gaza skyscraper after yourself.
• The Trump, Kennedy, Oz, and Heath Pharmacy. Medicaire has put a pause on funding medical equipment, orthotics, and prosthetics. For $1 million you can buy a pair of Trump Crutches™ for the needy.
• Qatar Trump Airlines: What to do with a gifted 747? Daily flights between any golf course and Mar-a-Lago.
• Trump Hospitals and Research Centers. No vaccinated or masked patients permitted. No cutting edge research allowed.
• The Trump Center for Human Resources (Trump HR™). His university went bankrupt, and he paid a $25 million fine for it. But Trump is a wonderful judge of quality employees whose main virtue is making their boss look good. A half dozen top administration officials are in the Epstein files.
• Trump Triumphal Arc. Bigger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but dedicated to heroes with bone spurs who salute North Korean generals. The Arc would resemble the meaning of Albert Speer’s “Cathedral of Light” to commemorate the thousand-year Reich in Nuremburg.
• The Jeff Epstein Beauty Pageant. Donald Trump co-owned and operated the Miss Universe Organization from 1996 to 2015. He bragged about going into dressing rooms. He may wish to re-acquire the business for his former friend (we have photos and emails).
• Trump Veterinary Center and Restaurant. Menu includes Cats and Dogs.
• Trump Amusement Park and Tariff Research Center. Highlight is the “TACO” Roller Coaster.
• Trump Rushmore National Monument. Granted, it must overcome significant geological and structural issues, and significant political opposition. But entry valid with “Trump the Beautiful” Park pass. If you deface the pass which has his orange likeness, you are deported.
• Trump Orange Cosmetics. Trump sells a tawdry fragrance whose slogan might be “Because real women love the kind of real man who smells of spray tan.” Also gaudy gold sneakers at only $800.
• Trump Condoms. In gold wrapper with label “Tiny Hands, Big Ego.” (Men whose ring finger is longer than middle finger have slightly bigger penises than average. This apparently explains why Trump flipped off an autoworker on a visit to a Michigan Ford plant. The Trump Footlong wiener, sold in Chicago, is 3“ long.
• Trump Cell Phones. Already in the works. None have been delivered as promised six months ago. Phone comes loaded—with one app, “Truth Social,” discounted to annual fee of $100 per year.
• The Trump “Dzhugashvili” Prize. Joe Stalin awarded himself 11 major medals, including three Lenin prizes, but never the Stalin prize.
• The Trump Legislative Award. To be given annually to Trump himself for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law in July 2025 that will impoverish Americans, lead to hunger crises, cut medical care, successfully enrich billionaires, enable Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain residents without due process, and increase the deficit by $3 trillion in one decade.
• Trump Currency. Name and stunning physiognomy on legal tender. Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) introduced the “Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act.” In addition to the slang for the $100 bill as the “C-note” and “Benjamin” (Franklin), there will be the “Cheeto” or “Taco” for the $250 bill.
• Trump Collectible Cards. What could be more presidential? Already available including images of the four-time draft dodger wearing American flag boxing gloves that run counter to his own presidential order of August 2025 making it a crime to desecrate the flag.

To ensure these and other possibilities, in February 2026 Trump’s representatives filed three applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark his name for future use on an airport in a variety of possible names, along “clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips.“ This would enable US citizens to continue to pay Trump through licensing fees. A reasonable patent lawyer might trademark ”Grifting President™“.

Trump has already immortalized his legacy in: at least eight Trump towers, and at least 13 others never completed; 10 other Trump buildings, and a dozen more never completed; a handful of Trump hotels, but at least 18 never completed or renamed;15 golf courses, and five abroad, and several under discussion abroad funded by Qataris and Saudis; seven former casinos and four never completed that led to six bankruptcies; and 94 felonies and one case of sexual abuse.

Trump can already be satisfied to learn that scientists have named several creatures after him: a fragile yellow-white moth (Neopalpa donaldtrumpi), a fossil sea urchin (Tetragramma donaldtrumpi), and Dermophis donaldtrumpi, the proposed name for a new species of blind amphibious 10 centimeter-long worm.

Paul Josephson is professor emeritus of history at Colby College and the author of 15 books, with 40 years of experience working in archives in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. on the political history of modern science.

Barron - time to enlist

Love the hat

Vital addition to your wardrobe, thanks to science. This is a real story, not a spoof.

Scientists Create “Smart Underwear” To Measure How Often We Really Fart

But would you really call it "smart?"

By Georgia Jiang, University of Maryland

Smart Underwear model. Credit: Brantley Hall,
University of Maryland.

Researchers at the University of Maryland have unveiled what they describe as the first wearable device built specifically to measure human flatulence.

Known as Smart Underwear, the discreet sensor system tracks hydrogen gas released during flatus, giving scientists an objective way to study a bodily function that has long relied on guesswork and self-reporting.

 Beyond counting how often people pass gas, the technology offers a new tool for observing gut microbial activity in daily life.

Scientists Prove Shellfish Can Be Farmed Far From Shore

Could offshore clamming become a thing?

By Kitta MacPherson

Laura Steeves (far right), a former postdoctoral student, collaborates
with a fishing partner to prepare a surfclam cage for deployment,
while Ailey Sheehan, a lab manager, activates sensors to facilitate
the launch. Sarah Borsetti/Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory

Rutgers researchers have made a discovery that could change the future of seafood farming in New Jersey.

A study led by marine scientist Daphne Munroe has shown that Atlantic surfclams can be successfully farmed in the open ocean.

Her research, published in the North American Journal of Aquaculture, proves that offshore aquaculture is not only possible but promising. This method could help meet the increasing demand for seafood while protecting wild clam populations.

“We’re among the first to show that offshore clam farming can really work,” said Munroe, an associate professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “It’s exciting because it opens the door to a new kind of business for New Jersey’s farming and fishing industries.”

The study was funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and was done in partnership with commercial fishing companies. 

“We didn’t do this in a lab,” Munroe said, emphasizing the importance of working with industry partners. “We did it in the real world, with real fishermen. That’s what makes the results so meaningful.”

Aquaculture is the practice of farming fish, shellfish and other aquatic organisms. It’s similar to agriculture, but instead of growing crops on land, farmers raise seafood in water. Most aquaculture takes place near the shore in protected bays or in artificial ponds and lakes.

These areas are easier to manage and safer from storms, but they are crowded with other user groups like homeowners and boaters and can be subject to poor water quality which can hinder farm operations. Offshore aquaculture avoids these challenges, Munroe said, by using the vast, cleaner waters of the open ocean, where there is more room and less potential for pollution.

Members of Munroe’s team wanted to test whether surfclams, which are large, hard-shelled shellfish that live buried in sandy ocean bottoms, could be raised offshore, where space is more available. The clams, commonly used in chowders and fried clam strips, are an important part of New Jersey’s commercial fishing industry.

Video: Deploying the clams

Jailed immigrant children punished by Trump regime for telling their stories

Seized Art, Eavesdropping Guards: How do you spell crimes against humanity?

By McKenzie Funk and Mica Rosenberg for ProPublica

When guards appeared earlier this month outside the room Christian Hinojosa shared with her son and other women and children at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, she guessed what they might be after. She quickly donned her puffy winter jacket, then slipped a manila envelope inside it. “Thank God the weather was cool,” she said — the jacket didn’t raise suspicions.

Then, she said, she was instructed to leave the room while eight to 10 guards lifted up mattresses, opened drawers and rifled through papers. In the envelope were kids’ writings and artwork about life in America’s only detention facility for immigrant families, a collection of trailers and dormitories in the brush country south of San Antonio. She planned to share their letters with the outside world.

Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils and drawing paper during recent room searches at Dilley, according to Hinojosa and three other former detainees, along with lawyers and advocates in contact with the families inside.

Guards have taken artwork, too, they said — even one child’s drawing of Bratz fashion dolls.

They said detainees have lost access to Gmail and other Google services in the Dilley library amid stepped up searches, seizures and restrictions on communications, making it more difficult for them to contact lawyers and advocates.

They and family members said guards sometimes hover within earshot during detainees’ video calls to relatives and reporters.

The detainees and others interviewed for this story said these measures increased after the Jan. 22 arrival of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old in a blue bunny hat, sparked protests and congressional visits. They said the clampdown intensified as children and parents at Dilley wrote letters to share with the public and reporters and relatives recorded video calls with the detainees, including those published by ProPublica this month. The children’s stories, many told in their own words, fueled an outcry over the scope of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, which the president had promised would focus on criminals.

The detainees said the more they tried to make their voices heard, the more difficult it became.

Rightwing Florida MAGAnut running against Rep. Seth Magaziner gets a warm Rhode Island welcome

Protesters gather outside Crowne Plaza in Warwick to protest candidate Vic Mellor and his right-wing 'Rhode Island First Rally'

Steve Ahlquist

©2026 Anthony Ricci

Florida businessman Vic Mellor has announced his intention to challenge Seth Magaziner for the 2nd Congressional District seat in Rhode Island. 

Mellor participated in the January 6, 2021, United States Capitol attack, which he described to Kathy Gregg at the Providence Journal: “January 6 was [in the] top five of the emotional feelings you have for being part of something." 

He and his son, said Mellor, made it inside the Capitol building that day. Mellor is a friend of retired Army General Michael Flynn and has been involved in Flynn’s Reawaken America tour. [See: Michael Flynn and the ‘Destiny of America’]

“I look forward to campaigning for another term next year,” said Representative Magaziner in a statement. “The stakes are high. No one who attacked the Capitol on January 6 should represent Rhode Island in Congress, and especially not someone who has lived outside our state for 30 years.”

As part of his campaign, Mellor held a Rhode Island First Rally¹ on Saturday, March 7, at the Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick Airport, which drew protesters and counter-protesters to the hotel entrance. Under the watchful eye of Warwick Police Officers, around 75 people gathered across the street from the hotel entrance, holding signs and chanting. Around a dozen counter-protesters stood at the entrance of the hotel, holding signs in support of President Trump and ICE.

Among the protesters were members of organizations opposed to extreme right-wing politics, including Li’l Rhode Visibility Brigade, The West Bay Blue Wave, South County Resistance, South County Rising, Stand Up Rhode Island, Indivisible East Bay RI, Cranston Forward, RI-WTF Resistance Coalition, Indivisible Metro RI, Jewish Voice for Peace - RI, and Indivisible South Coast New England.

Reporter Pat Ford has pictures on Facebook from inside Mellor’s Rhode Island First Rally.

©2026 Anthony Ricci

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Well, there's that