We have previously commented on the disturbing subject of the commercial exploitation of elderly members of the community. In our blog concerning “Equity Loan Mortgages,” we indicated the numerous unspoken financial responsibilities still remaining to the lender, such as taxes and upkeep, and the cruel requirement that a resident who is not the official title-holder, upon the decease of the record owner. must vacate the premises. On the subject of the sale back of insurance policies, we commented on the financial loss on the part of the originally intended beneficiary and the unconscionable windfall thereby obtained by the insurance company
However,. It would appear that the singularly most heartless and cruel of all of the profitable elder scams consists of the advertised sale of purported panaceas for the dreaded disease of dementia.
As is popularly known, “dementia” is a progressive decline in cognition, i.e., memory and thinking. The risk of the dreaded condition reportedly increases after age 65. It would appear that there is no known preventative or cure for the dehumanizing malady. We have confirmed the latter declaration by our readings on the subject and by inquiries of friends who are physicians.
Notwithstanding such a disappointing state of affairs, we daily experience televised offers of sale of pharmaceuticals allegedly designed to prevent or ameliorate the onset and nightmarish effects of this ultimate disability. If our information and resultant perception are correct, this practice is, demonstrably fraudulent but cruel and insulting to the elderly citizen and their family.
The dramatic portrayal in television commercials of scripted testimonial statements from smiling, fully cognitive, elderly citizens, attesting to the unfailing efficacy of various presented products, allegedly effective in the prevention or amelioration of this frightening disability, deserve condemnation. Assuming that our accumulated information is correct, this nefariously profitable practice is no more acceptable than the misleading sale of “Snake Oil” in the days of America’s wild west.
Notably, such practice is more misleadingly impactful and deceptive than the glamorous pretensions contained in cosmetic commercials; in its efforts to be commercially successful, it is sociopathically cruel. One requires but a modicum of circumspection to conclude that these empirically misleading representations are as brutal and insulting as they are unsupported, blatantly quixotic, and deceitful.
We would be overjoyed to learn of the future development of a medical preventative for the onset of the existential debilitation caused by this dehumanizing tragedy. In such instances, doctors would then be appropriately enabled to prescribe it to contextually vulnerable patients. Until that singularly celebratory event, it would seem that such advertised, misleading panaceas should morally be removed from television (as were tobacco products, for health reasons) as an avoidance of shameful commercial grift and the preservation of the dignity of our elder citizens.
-p.
plinyblogdotcom 