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Old Wed Jun 15, 2011, 02:03 PM
Neil Cuadra Neil Cuadra is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Los Angeles, California
Posts: 2,553
BeTransfusionSmart.com is OK

You are right that it's smart to consider the messenger, not just the message. We do weed out advertising at Marrowforums but BeTransfusionSmart.com (alias AskAboutIron.com) is a website that can help patients without giving them a hard sell. It's written in layperson's terms, which gives it an advantage over many medical sites you'll find. Overall, I think the tradeoff is worth it. Novartis also runs Exjade.com.

A number of the pharmaceutical companies run websites with disease and drug descriptions. Although the companies have a vested interest in promoting their products and these sites tend to give short shrift to the "watch and wait" approach in favor of treatment, I've found that they present accurate information about AA, MDS, and PNH, and they spend enough money to make good use of slideshows, diagrams, charts, animations, and other information that can help explain the diseases and their treatment in a way most of us can follow.

Other examples: Soliris.net is run by Alexion. Revlimid.com and Vidaza.com are run by Celgene. They are up front about it, putting their names and logos there so you know who the source of the information is. In contrast, it's not clear at first glance who runs PNHSource.com, but that too is Alexion.
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