The Ploy of Exaggeration and Deception

Yesterday a friend posted on Facebook the following:  “The fact that jellyfish have survived 650 million years without brains gives hope to many people.”  I fact-checked it and it is true, jellyfish do not have brains (they don’t have hearts either) and have been around for nearly 650 million years.  That information made me think of “Prevagen.”  Pravagen is a brain health supplement which claims to augment proteins that support brain health, which are lost as a result of the aging process.  This brain health supplement advertises that its basic ingredient comes from the jellyfish—a plankton (not a fish) that does not have a brain (or a heart).  

I don’t remember “names” as well as I once did.  I forget occasionally.  When I go to the doctor or the dentist I am often told that my particular malady is due to the aging process.  I am then subjected to a constant barrage of commercials about Prevagen, suggesting that my mental capacity is declining with age and that this “stuff” from the jellyfish is the remedy I need.  The claims are exaggerated and deceitful.  The price for the supplement is exorbitant.  It is not FDA approved.  There is no clinical evidence to support the claims.  In fact, the FDA has noted that the ingredient from the jellyfish is no longer extracted from the jellyfish—it is in fact, synthetic!  The jellyfish doesn’t have a brain or a heart.  The exaggeration and deception foisted by Prevagen on folk like me demonstrates some wily thinking (they must have brains), but it doesn’t appear to me that they have much of a heart.  They are bilking millions of elderly folk into buying a brain supplement, reporting falsely that its main ingredient comes from a plankton that has no brain—and no heart! 

When this same ploy (used excessively in the market place) of exaggeration and deception is politically appropriated we are easily sucked in. Not all immigrants are “rapists” or criminals—there is no empirical justification for such a claim. Yet we are sucked into the belief that the present conduct of the government is warranted and that a wall is necessary.  The audacity of the deceit, the grossness of the falsehood, the massiveness of the exaggeration works.  This ploy does precisely what the makers of Prevagen do—it gets the public to buy into it.  And we do!  Sometimes I wonder if it is only the jellyfish that is without brain or heart.