DailyDirt: Meet Your Meat, And Cook It Thoroughly

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Penicillin and its derivatives haven't actually been around for that long in the scheme of things, but antibiotics have enabled an incredible age of prosperity without people having to worry about common infections killing us off. Unfortunately, nature has a way of evolving and adapting to our not-so-clever use of antibiotics, and we've been breeding superbugs in our hospitals and in our industrialized food chain. Sketchy meats have been around for a long time, but hopefully, it won't take a public health nightmare to get folks to take a closer look at food safety.

• The overuse of antibiotics in the meat industry could be creating superbugs in our food chain -- and a surprising amount of these resistant microbes are already in commercial foods. Consumer Reports looked at a variety of meat samples and found over 80% of the turkey meat it tested contained superbugs. Ugh. Cook your Turkeys thoroughly next Thanksgiving.... [url]
• The 1993 E. coli outbreak from hamburger meat killed at least four kids and poisoned hundreds of people. That outbreak was followed years later by other infectious contamination in produce, cheese and cookie dough... and the food safety system still isn't perfect. Salmonella in chicken is another potential problem, and the food industry is responding -- though perhaps a bit slower than some would like. [url]
• Bacteriophages as biocontrol agents in foods were approved by the FDA in 2006, but it's not approved for infant formula. Bacteriophages -- viruses that specifically attack bacteria -- are abundant everywhere, so they're presumably safe and environmentally friendly -- and could prevent babies from getting terrible illnesses. These phages could be an important tool to combat food-borne microbes, but we may still want to be careful not to over-use them or over-engineer them to the point that they might attack microbes indiscriminately. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, check out this holiday gift guide for some awesome deals at the Techdirt deals store.

Filed Under: bacteriophages, e coli, fda, food, food safety, hamburger, meat, microbes, outbreak, penicillin, salmonella, superbugs, turkey
Companies: consumer reports

How Bad Copyright Law Makes Us Less Safe... And How Regulators Have It All Backwards

from the fix-1201-now dept

For quite some time we've pointed out how problematic Section 1201 of the DMCA is. That's the part of the law that says it's copyright infringement to simply circumvent any kind of "technological protection measure" even if the reasons for doing so are perfectly legal and have nothing to do with infringement at all. And, of course, we now have the big "1201 Triennial Review" results that are about to come out. That's the system that was put in place because even Congress realized just how stupid Section 1201 was and how much innovation and research it would limit -- so it created a weird sort of safety valve. Every three years, the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress would work together to come up with classes of technology that are magically "exempted" from the law. Now, normally, you'd think that if you have to come up with exemptions, there's probably something wrong with the law that needs to be fixed, but that's not the way this worked.

The latest triennial review results are about to come out, and a lot of people are focused on it -- in part because of current events. As you may recall, earlier this year, we wrote about one of the exemption requests in particular: over whether or not you can tinker with the software in your car. GM was fighting against this, and we were shocked to then see the EPA side with GM (!?!?) on this issue, claiming that it's a perfectly reasonable use of copyright law to stop tinkering with cars on the off chance that some of that tinkering might lead to changing emissions to illegal levels.

Of course, just a few weeks later, we discovered that VW had been playing games with its software to avoid emissions tests and pollute the world at a much greater rate than is legal (or healthy). Many people have pointed out that, if the software wasn't all locked up, it seems likely that people would have discovered this problem much earlier. The latest to weigh in on this is Senator Ron Wyden, in a WSJ op-ed, where he explains how the EPA has this whole thing completely backwards:

This year the Environmental Protection Agency submitted comments to the Copyright Office requesting that no exemptions should be granted for car owners or researchers to access and modify the software in their vehicles. The EPA says you shouldn’t be allowed to tinker with your car because it might increase emissions from your tailpipe.

This would block any researcher who would study software in automobiles to make them safer or more environmentally friendly. This summer, security researchers demonstrated that a hacker could take over a Jeep’s systems—GPS, transmission and brakes, among others—over the Internet. This could lead to crashes and even sabotage. In this case at least, Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles to patch that vulnerability, which otherwise could have gone unnoticed.

The obstacle thrown up against access to copyrighted software makes it more difficult for researchers and engineers to find similar problems in the future. Volkswagen’s falsified emissions reports were discovered by independent testing—yet the source of the problem was in the automobile’s software. Independent researchers might have found the problem sooner if not for the threat of lawsuits brought by the company under the DMCA.

In short, while the EPA is worried about individuals potentially violating the Clean Air Act or other regulations, it should be worried about the companies that are actually doing so.

And it's not just the EPA. As Wyden notes, the FDA is doing something similar, which may be even more dangerous:

The Food and Drug Administration also is getting in on the copyright game. It is telling the Copyright Office that modifying software in medical devices, and then providing them to patients without FDA approval, could put people in danger. But the distribution of untested devices is already illegal. Copyright law should not prevent researchers from taking a look at the software and thinking about how to make devices more effective and safer.

Wyden (along with Rep. Jared Polis) introduced a bill earlier this year to try to deal with this on a permanent basis, rather than through this ridiculous triennial review process. Of course, if the TPP is approved, it may be more difficult to actually make such a change.

But, really, the fact that the FDA and the EPA are making these arguments is a real sign of just how broken our copyright law is and how little many regulators understand innovation, technology and intellectual property. The EPA and the FDA come from a world of "permission-only innovation." They are both focused solely on setting up laws that "prevent bad stuff" usually through setting up testing regimes. But those regimes can be gamed -- and they don't seem to recognize that by allowing permissionless innovation to happen, it also opens up worlds of useful research and beneficial innovations, both of which could do a lot more to prevent the kinds of harm that the EPA and the FDA think they're preventing by opposing these exemptions.

There's a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of innovation in this setup -- where regulators think that the unknown must be "dangerous" and should be prevented until proven okay. But, as history has shown, such a setup only opens up all sorts of games that the big knowledgeable players can use to dance around those regulations, and no real way for outsiders to call them on it (or to create better alternatives). Permissionless innovation is not just a slogan, it's incredibly effective -- and misusing copyright law to prevent it, out of the fear that something bad might possibly happen, without recognizing all the good that is much more likely to come from it, is really dangerous. We're only just learning that now because of what's finally come out in the news about VW, but getting rid of the stupid anti-circumvention clause in the DMCA would go a long way towards actually fixing this mess, rather than relying on bureaucrats whose defacto response is to say "don't do that."

Filed Under: 1201, anti-circumvention, copyright, copyright office, dmca, dmca 1201, emissions, epa, fda, innovation, library of congress, permissionless innovation, research, ron wyden, security

DailyDirt: Breaking Bad... With Yeast?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've mentioned before how yeast can produce a bunch of useful stuff, beyond bread and beer. Synthetic biology promises to give us engineered microorganisms that can make almost any specialty chemical or even some biofuels. Brewing medicine might not be too far away, and it might be incredibly difficult to control "controlled substances" in the very near future.

• Genetically modified yeast can produce opiates similar to morphine. And it looks like several other derivatives of potent painkillers can be made this way, too, possibly leading to ones that are less addictive or that have fewer side effects. [url]
• Other scientists have coaxed yeast into producing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), one of the psychoactive compounds in marijuana. It's still pretty difficult to do, but presumably, it will get easier and more economical. And by then, we'll have THC-infused beer brewed and on tap. [url]
• Meanwhile, the FDA is proposing new rules to help distinguish copycat pharmaceuticals and biosimilar drugs. Adding four random letters to the end of a generic name medicine could reduce some confusion, but hopefully, in the end, everyone who needs critical drugs will get access to more affordable pharmaceuticals. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: biology, biosimilar, biotech, drugs, fda, gmo, health, marijuana, medicine, microorganisms, morphine, opiates, painkillers, pharmaceuticals, synthetic biology, tetrahydrocannabinol, thc, yeast

FDA Is Angry That ICANN Won't Just Censor Websites On Its Say So

from the what's-wrong-with-a-court-order? dept

It's not just the City of London Police demanding that websites be taken offline without any due process. It appears that the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is getting in on the game as well. The Wall Street Journal recently published a detailed article about how angry the FDA is with ICANN (there's also a corresponding blog post which may not face the same paywall restrictions) for not simply killing domains that the FDA deems "rogue pharmacies." That's not to say that there aren't reasonable concerns about rogue pharmacies. There are clearly some concerns about those sites, but it seems like there are better ways to deal with those than just barging in and saying that ICANN and registrars need to take down sites based solely on their say so.

In July, the FDA teamed with Interpol and dozens of countries to try to shut down more than 1,300 websites suspected of selling drugs without a prescription. Officials sent a list of all the websites, carrying names such as buyoxycontinonline.com and approvedonlinepharmacy.net, to the Chinese company that registered them. The company replied with a request for a court order and then sent a terse follow-up email: “It is not possible for us to take action.”

In frustration, officials turned to the Internet’s central administrator, an organization called the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann. Its contract with the registrar, BizCN.com, requires the company to investigate reports of illegal behavior.

But here's the thing. Everyone in the articles (including the reporters) seem to take it as perfectly reasonable that ICANN and/or these registrars should have just taken down these sites. No one points out that BizCN seemed to respond properly by asking for a court order. ICANN isn't in the business of censorship. It shouldn't be the one to determine if a site is an illegal pharmacy or not. There's a reason why we have due process and courts to adjudicate decisions like that. Putting the entire burden on registrars and/or ICANN to act as internet cops, ready to take down sites at a notification's notice seems tremendously problematic.

It's a recipe for censorship, stifling free speech and hindering innovation. And yet, that's what the FDA and others want:

Because of its central role, regulators and law-enforcement agencies around the world say Icann could be crucial to their crackdown on illicit Internet operators of all kinds.

Already, just in the online pharmacy space, we've seen how certain pharmaceutical companies like to conflate the small number of truly "rogue" pharmacies that sell either counterfeit drugs or real drugs without proper procedures, with perfectly safe and legal Canadian pharmacies that many Americans rely on for cheaper drugs. The big pharmaceutical companies would like to shut down that competition, even as American politicians have explored expanding the ability of US citizens to get their drugs from such pharmacies. And that's why it's reasonable to ask for an actual court order before taking down sites -- rather than just assuming that some bureaucrat at the FDA can accurately determine which sites are "good" and which are "bad," and then demand that registrars or ICANN automatically take action.

Filed Under: canadian pharmacies, censorship, fda, icann, interpol, pharmaceuticals, pharmacies, registrars, rogue pharmacies, rogue sites
Companies: bizcn, icann

Why The FDA Ban On Providing Health Reports Based On Personal Genomes Won't Work

from the because-DNA-is-digital-data dept

When the first human genome was sequenced -- that is, when most of the 3 billion base-pairs that go to make up our DNA were elucidated -- as part of the Human Genome Project, around $3 billion was spent. Today, the cost of sequencing is falling even faster than Moore's Law, which means everyone could have their genome sequenced soon, if they wished (and maybe even if they don't....). By analyzing the DNA, and looking at the gene variants found there, it is possible to spot predispositions to certain diseases or medical conditions, potentially allowing lifestyle changes or treatment that reduce the risk. The well-known personal genomics company 23andMe was offering this kind of service, at least on a small scale. But that stopped at the end of last year, as the company explains:

We no longer offer our health-related genetic reports to new customers to comply with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's directive to discontinue new consumer access during our regulatory review process.

At this time, we do not know the timeline as to which health reports might be available in the future or when they might be available.

According to an article in MIT Technology Review, here's what had happened:

in November 2013, the Food and Drug Administration had cracked down on 23andMe. The direct-to-consumer gene testing company's popular DNA health reports and slick TV ads were illegal, it said, since they'd never been cleared by the agency.

But as that same article goes on to explain in detail, users of 23andMe are having no difficulty in getting around that ban on obtaining health-related analyses of their genomes, using third-party sites like Promethease:

Promethease was created by a tiny, two-man company run as a side project by Greg Lennon, a geneticist based in Maryland, and Mike Cariaso, a computer programmer. It works by comparing a person's DNA data with entries in SNPedia, a sprawling public wiki on human genetics that the pair created eight years ago and run with the help of a few dozen volunteer editors. Lennon says Promethease is being used to build as many as 500 gene reports a day.

That kind of analysis is possible because, once sequenced, DNA is essentially just digital data: very easy to upload and compare against biomedical databases storing information as digital files. Even though they are not currently allowed to analyze it, companies like 23andMe still provide customers with access to the raw genomic data, which can then be sent to services like Promethease for a basic report drawing on its DNA database.

This raises an interesting question: given that the information on SNPedia is drawn from public databases, can the FDA stop people using it to circumvent the ban on 23andMe? According to MIT Technology Review, the FDA believes the answers is "yes", but that just won't work in practice. Even if the FDA manages to shut down all the services like Promethease, it would be easy to write a program that searches the main public biomedical databases for exactly the same kind of information about particular gene variants found in somebody's genome. The software could be shared freely as open source, making it impossible to prevent people from obtaining the program and carrying out such searches independently on their own computers.

It's true that there are good reasons why the FDA might be concerned about members of the public being given medical analyses of their genome in inappropriate ways. For a start, the results are generally probabilistic, rather than definite predictions; that makes them hard for non-experts to interpret. And when it isn't about probabilities -- if it is certain that you will develop a disease, possibly a devastating one -- there's a strong argument that counselling needs to be made available when that information is given to the person affected.

Still, regardless of the extent to which the FDA's actions are understandable, trying to stop people comparing their DNA with publicly-available information is futile. As the copyright industry has learned the hard way, once data is digital, it is essentially uncontrollable. The best thing to do is to accept that fact and move on. In this case, that means the FDA should encourage companies offering analysis to do a good job, not block them completely.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: databases, dna, fda, information, innovation, public health
Companies: 23andme

EasyDNS Tries To Balance Bogus Requests To Take Down Legit Foreign Online Pharmacies Against Truly Rogue Pharmacies

from the not-an-easy-balance dept

We've written a few times about domain registrar/hosting company EasyDNS, which has been pretty vocal about how law enforcement and industry groups have recently started targeting registrars and hosting comapnies as "the soft underbelly" for censorship and coercive control. While we've covered this issue frequently as it relates to things like copyright, the real ground zero for this may be around online pharmacies. The online pharmacy space is a bit complicated -- because there are really a few different kinds. There are US-based accredited/approved pharmacies, there are overseas accredited/approved online pharmacies... and then there are flat-out rogue pharmacies dealing in illegally obtained or counterfeit medicines. Obviously the last one is in a different category altogether from the first two, but US drug companies like to conflate legal foreign online pharmacies with the rogue ones.

For years, there have been fights over the issue of "gray market" and "re-imported" drugs. The most common case involves Canadian pharmacies, which are perfectly legitimate, selling into the US, but at prices much cheaper than the drug companies would like (undercutting the prices charged by American pharmacies). Fake and dangerous drugs from rogue pharmacies are a real (if relatively small) problem. Legitimate foreign pharmacies selling into the US at cheaper prices are a made up problem by US drug companies. But those US drug companies like to take the "small" problem, and blame it on any non-US pharmacy in an attempt to block out the competition. This has been going on for years, but has ramped up recently.

We've written about how the big drug companies recently got control over the .pharmacy domain, and the indications are that they're planning to use it to block out legitimate foreign pharmacies by arguing that only online pharmacies with a .pharmacy domain are "legit" and then banning legitimate foreign pharmacies from getting the domain. Earlier this year, we also wrote about the lobbying group, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, telling registrars that if they complain about a site, it must be taken down.

Mixed in with all of this is the somewhat questionable setup of an operation called "LegitScript," which is an organization that claims to verify which pharmacies are legit. The history of "LegitScript" is extremely sketchy, involving a former White House official who specifically worked to block legitimate Canadian pharmacies from sending drugs to the US, and who then immediately went off to form LegitScript as a competitor to PharmacyChecker -- a similar service that verifies online pharmacies including Canadian pharmacies. Oh, and the "immediately" in the last sentence may be inaccurate as the guy, John Horton, appears to have registered the domain for LegitScript while he was still a federal government employee... Either way, the US pharma industry has worked hard to make LegitScript the standard while pushing back on PharmacyChecker.

Back to EasyDNS: the company has been fighting off these demands to shut down sites repeatedly, saying that it will only do so with a court order. After getting into a fight with the US's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over demands to take down a bunch of domains, EasyDNS finally agreed to take down a site, after being provided with evidence that it was truly a rogue pharmacy, and someone had died from taking drugs ordered from that site. Because of this EasyDNS has adjusted its policy, saying that if you are selling drugs, you have to prove to EasyDNS that you have a license to do so, or be approved by either LegitScript or PharmacyChecker (meaning that it will allow legitimate foreign pharmacies to exist). EasyDNS is still standing up to bogus requests (including new ones from the City of London Police) to take down websites, but is being more proactive when an online pharmacy has no signs of being legitimate.

While some people complained about EasyDNS's new policy, the company's CEO Mark Jeftovic explained it as follows (after referencing the latest copyright takedown demand from the City of London Police):

So in one case we have people allegedly pirating Honey Boo Boo reruns and on the other we have people dying. We don't know where exactly, but the line goes somewhere in between there.

We have always done summary takedowns on net abuse issues, spam, botnets, malware etc. It seems reasonable that a threat to public health or safety that has been credibly vetted fits in the same bucket.

As a private company we feel within our rights to set limits and boundaries on what kinds of business risk we are willing to take on and under what circumstances. Would we tell the US State Department to go to hell if they wanted us to take down ZeroHedge? Absolutely. Do we want to risk criminally indicted by the FDA because of unregulated drug imports? Not so much.

He also notes, as we did, how Fedex was recently indicted over deliveries from questionable online pharmacies, and notes that it's only a matter of time until criminal charges are filed against a registrar or hosting company as well.

These are not easy decisions for anyone -- though, I have to imagine that truly "rogue" pharmacies are increasingly moving to the darknet and underground markets anyway. However, while some may disagree, there does seem to be a reasonable argument for why a registrar like EasyDNS decides it really doesn't want to be involved with clearly rogue pharmacies.

Filed Under: domain registrars, fda, grey market, online pharmacies, pharmaceuticals, reimportation, rogue pharmacies
Companies: easydns, legitscripts, pharmacychecker

DailyDirt: What's That In Your Food?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Processed foods are everywhere. They're quick and easy, as well as mighty tasty because they're designed to hit the perfect combination of salt, sugar and fat our bodies crave. Unfortunately, few things are actually perfect if you look closely enough. Common food packaging frequently lists ingredients that sound like a nightmare chemistry exam you haven't studied for, and preservatives aren't all that appetizing even if you can't taste them. Here are a few links on food additives that you may or may not think are scary.

• If you can't pronounce azodicarbonamide, then you probably don't think it should be in your food (or yoga mats, either). But the dose makes the poison, right? So, <45 ppm shouldn't be too bad. [url]
• Large food companies regularly re-formulate their products to tailor them to local markets, but the differences in ingredients lists for the UK versus the US sound a little disconcerting. Some ingredients are banned as food additives in other countries, but in the US, they're just fine... /ominous music [url]
• New food additives are increasingly coming from natural sources. Natural sources for blue food coloring aren't easy to come by, but there's an FDA-approved extract from a cyano­bacteria that's blue. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: azodicarbonamide, chemistry, fda, food, food additives, food coloring, health, ingredients, poison, preservatives, toxic

DailyDirt: It's The Little Things That Matter...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Adding a little bit of something can make a huge difference. For example, some carbon and a few other trace metals added to iron can make a steel stronger and stainless. Nanotechnology promises to improve a bunch of things with very small changes to the surfaces of common materials. But these small changes could also cause some big problems. Here are just a few links on some small ingredients that might not be so great for the environment.

• In case you hadn't heard, Minnesota has passed a law against antibacterial soaps containing triclosan. The law won't go into effect until 2017, so the big soap makers have some time to try to fight the ban or figure out how to sell regular old soap now that they've flooded the market with soaps that tell consumers that old soap formulas are more germy. [url]
• Illinois has banned microbeads in soaps and body washes. This law also won't go into effect for a few years, but the tiny plastic beads are already turning up in the Great Lakes and in various waterways. [url]
• If you don't like the idea of nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide in food, you should look at your dairy products a bit more closely. The FDA is looking into regulating nano-sized particles, but some commercial products may already contain them. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: antibacterial, environment, fda, microbeads, nanotechnology, soap, titanium dioxide, triclosan

FDA Drives Medical Innovation Overseas As 23andme Looks Elsewhere To Help People

from the fda-failures dept

Last fall, we noted that the FDA had come down hard on 23andme for offering its inexpensive and easy to use genetic testing without first getting detailed FDA approval. As we noted at the time, this seemed to be a typical FDA overreaction. People aren't using 23andme as the final word on something, but rather as a useful indicator to explore more deeply with medical professionals if they needed to be aware of something, change lifestyles, etc. Furthermore, we noted how stopping 23andme and similar offerings would only delay important innovations that the medical world really needs today.

And, now it appears that all the FDA has really succeeded in doing is driving that innovation overseas, as 23andme focuses on expanding in various countries abroad, rather than the US.

While it awaits the agency's approval, a process that could take years, 23andMe aims to offer partial or full genetic-testing services in one or more countries outside of the United States by the end of the year, with likely contenders including Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, the source said.

A big part of the problem is that the FDA is simply not designed to actually deal with innovative healthcare products. It was built to handle one thing and one thing only: approving pharmaceuticals. And it has a very hammer-and-nail approach to everything it does. Nearly a decade ago, we wrote about Andy Kessler's book The End of Medicine. While that book is now a little outdated, one thing that was quite clear in that book is how ill-prepared (and ill-interested in ever becoming prepared) the FDA is for technological innovations in the healthcare space. The FDA understands clinical testing for drugs, and has trouble understanding anything that doesn't fit into that paradigm.

Providing more useful information to people about their own genes and makeup is a very useful tool. Yes, there can be false positives, but is it better to keep people totally ignorant, or to better inform them across the board? Sure, perhaps it makes sense to do thorough testing of drugs to make sure they're safe (though, even with that there are plenty of compelling arguments for why the FDA does that wrong too), but when it comes to a service that is about providing more information to people, allowing them to be better informed and do more research to be healthier, you'd hope that the FDA would learn how to enable more innovation, rather than shutting it down... and sending the innovation overseas.

Filed Under: fda, genetics, information, overseas, personal genetics, regulations
Companies: 23andme

The FDA Wants To Dig Through Everyone's Stuff In Order To 'Monitor Online Sentiment'

from the a-tough-sell-in-the-current-anti-surveillance-climate dept

The FDA would like to know what you're thinking. It doesn't want to read minds and it couldn't care less about your lesser, non-FDA-related thoughts. That stuff's for other agencies with even creepier intentions and more nefarious toolsets. No, the FDA wants to know what you, the public, think about the FDA. And by "think," it means post stuff on the internet. And by "stuff," it means damn near everything.

Regulatory Focus (via the Pharma Marketing Blog) reports that the FDA is seeking bids from contractors in order to provide the agency with assistance in "monitoring online sentiment."

It is similar in many respects to an earlier contract awarded to help the agency monitor social media traffic. That contract was subject to a considerable amount of scrutiny by some legislators, including Republican Tom Coburn (R-OK), who included the project in his influential yearly "Wastebook" (#87) of allegedly superfluous taxpayer-funded projects.

"Being liked is important, but maybe federal agencies should take some time away from figuring out what people think about them and spend more time just doing their job," Coburn's report quipped.

This new push for an online sentiment tracker does seem more than a little needy and/or narcissistic. Sure, even federal agencies need to do a little PR work from time to time, but the regulatory agency's focus should be regulating, not scanning the web for "influencers" in order to slightly better target its talking points and drug interaction updates.

This would just seem like a bit of the old "B.M.F. (US Gov. Remix)" if the FDA wasn't looking to cast an FDA-centric dragnet across the internet in order to achieve its goal of… well… being liked? Here's a truncated list of everywhere and everything the FDA wants to "monitor" for "sentiment."

Must draw from multiple social media channels, including (but not limited to): blogs, forums, Twitter, social networking, etc.

Must draw from mainstream media sources

Must draw from photos, audio and video sources

Must draw from open source data sets, including, e-commerce sites Amazon, drugstore.com, etc.),

Must draw from proprietary data sets

Must allow for network, nodal analyses of communications channels, influencers, propagators, etc.

The contractor providing this glorious bounty of harvested data and content is given the option of doing the work onsite at the FDA or on its own premises and must be able to create a robust program that is easy, accessible, powerful and deeply technical. Said contractor must also be able to discern the meaning of the following word salad without mocking the agency or consulting a third-party interpreter.

Gain access to the message impact to the geographic area, determine influencers and create analytics to better target the outreach of public health messages to various audiences

Oh, and presumably the software needs to come in under budget, or at least not so far over it that Sen. Coburn adds FDA Online Sentiment Monitor And Message Impacter (v. 1.3b) to the 2015 edition of Wastebook.

So, as Coburn sort of asked, why should the FDA care what the public is thinking (or at least spreading all over the internet), or why should it care so much that it's willing to task a contractor with sifting through nearly everything that can be publicly posted in order to make small adjustments to its PR efforts? Is it really worthwhile to chase down something this nebulous? The FDA obviously believes it is. This is its second attempt to turn social media into a set of massageable numbers.

But what about privacy concerns? Nothing in the bid document mentions anything about that. Of course, the government assumes that if people are willing to post things publicly then they're willing to share it with federal agencies as well. There's no expectation of privacy to prevent a private contractor from rooting through videos, photos, blog posts, podcasts and other shared content in hopes of quantifying online feels vis-a-vis the FDA.

But a smart agency would take into consideration the potential impact of its data/content trawling, first and foremost in terms of public image, because that area -- the same one it's trying to improve -- is the one that will take the most damage when people witness yet another agency rooting around in their stuff. (Yes, they share stuff and they still consider it "theirs." It's weird but that's how humans feel about personal content, even if shared publicly.) Just because you can do it with no legal repercussions doesn't mean you should do it, especially in pursuit of vagaries like "online sentiment."

Filed Under: consumer sentiment, fda, online sentiment