Upcoming sleep apnea webcast: edutainment, infomercial or Health 2.0?

Dmitriy Kruglyak of Trusted.MD has been working up a Provigil webcast, taking place Dec. 13, to be hosted by a doc and sponsored by the biopharma company selling this sleep apnea drug.  I think Dmitriy is doing his client a service by promoting the sort of on-line dialogue that consumers are clamoring for.  (Presumably the webcast will be littered with the all the sorts of warnings that FDA rules require.  When a one-page magazine ad for a prescription drug is followed by another full page of disclaimers, warnings, etc., one starts to wonder about the usefulness of both the ad and the disclaimers.  I also wonder how prominent the disclaimers ought to be in the context of a webcast.) 

Some of the current hype and gee-whiz atmosphere around "Health 2.0" seems to be confusing the medium with the message.  Here’s hoping that the medium can carry the message to (and from) consumers in a manner that is beneficial to all involved.

— David Harlow