Since When Is a Rock a Medical Device?

By Jon Herring

In ETR #1996, I wrote a health brief titled "Since When Is a Cherry a Drug?". It was about the FDA’s insane, overarching plan to regulate foods as drugs. Well, they haven’t stopped there.

A new FDA document reveals a plan to reclassify virtually all vitamins, supplements, herbs, and even vegetable juices as drugs. It also calls for items like Pilates machines, massage rocks, and acupuncture needles to be classified as "medical devices," requiring FDA approval and regulation.

If this draconian proposal succeeds, vitamin shop owners could be jailed for "practicing medicine." Running an unlicensed juice retreat would make you a criminal. Supplements and functional foods would all be stripped of their function claims. And growing and selling garden herbs would classify you as a drug dealer.

In an article on this subject, Mike Adams of NewsTarget.com reminds us that the FDA is the same agency that:

. Reapproved the drug Vioxx, even after it killed over 50,000 Americans
. Carried out gunpoint raids on vitamin shops and natural health clinics as direct intimidation against those who practice natural medicine
. Wants to label irradiated foods as "pasteurized"
. Openly allows corrupt experts to vote on new drug approvals, even when those experts are taking money from the same companies impacted by their votes
. Refuses to legalize the use of stevia as a sweetener, even though it is used for this purpose virtually everywhere else in the world.
. Ordered the destruction of recipe books that mentioned stevia (as part of a campaign to keep the public ignorant of the herb and to protect the profits of aspartame and other chemical sweeteners)

This proposal by the FDA is a desperate attempt to save the failing industry of conventional medicine. It is meant to ensure the monopoly profits of the drug companies and expand the influence of the FDA, all at the expense of your God-given rights and freedoms.

If you would like to lodge a complaint with the FDA, you can do so here: http://tinyurl.com/35ftp7. Reference docket number 2006D-0480 in your complaint.
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"Never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe."

Claud Cockburn

Should You Charge Vendors for Client Referrals?

By Bob Bly

For decades, I have made it a practice to refer my clients to vendors who can provide services those clients need… and that I don’t or can’t offer myself. I have also made it a policy never to accept a referral fee from any vendor. Many offer it, and some even argue with me when I turn it down.

I do not accept referral fees for this reason: My primary mission is to give my clients the best recommendations and advice I can - and that means I have to be totally objective. Even when what’s best for the client isn’t profitable for me.

For instance, many people call me, eager to pay me thousands of dollars to write a promotion for them. But if I don’t think their idea will work or their product will fly, I turn them down, explaining why I won’t do the job. By doing this, I am saving them from financial disaster… but I am also talking myself out of a nice, fat copywriting fee.

When I tell someone not to proceed with a promotion, my recommendation is based on my nearly three decades of marketing experience. Therefore, the advice is valuable to them. But since they didn’t engage me on a consulting basis, I don’t get paid a dime for it.

I want my clients to know that the advice I give them is always in their best interest… and if I took referral fees from vendors, it would create a potential conflict.

I sincerely believe I would always recommend the best vendor for the job - not the vendor who paid me the highest commission. But could I… or my client… be 100 percent certain I was always motivated by their interest and not a juicy referral fee?

Now, while I am against taking referral fees, I do make it a practice to send a small thank-you gift to people who refer business to me. So if it’s okay for me to send a small gift to a referral source, it seems like it should be okay for vendors to send small gifts to me when I am their referral source.

I don’t want them to do it. And I openly discourage it. But if a nice little gift arrives in the mail, I usually don’t send it back. I keep it and thank the vendor.

The reason I bring this up is that PF, a copywriter, recently contacted me asking for referrals. But unlike the many other copywriters who want referrals from me, PF was offering me something in return for each new client I referred to her - a free lobster. Or, rather, a $50 gift certificate to a website selling Maine lobsters.

Actually, I don’t eat lobster, which I know is unusual. Any food that comes in its own armor is not for me… and, truthfully, I don’t even like the texture or taste. But my oldest son Alex loves lobster… and a $50 lobster would put a smile on his face.

So, did I take PF up on her offer?

Frankly, yes. I referred a few potential clients to her. But I tend to do that for new freelancers anyway.

Did the lobster bribe influence me unduly?

I like to think not. But I am human, and we all like to get what Michael Masterson calls "glicken" - a little something extra.

Should you take referral fees from - or give referral fees to - other vendors?

That’s up to you.

But here’s my position on this issue: Make sure your recommendations are "pure," unbiased, and objective - and make sure your clients know it. That way, you get something far more valuable than the referral commission the vendor wants to pay you. You get your client’s trust - and a reputation in your industry as someone who is honest and trustworthy.

That’s something - unlike a lobster - that money can’t buy.

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a popular Early to Rise columnist, self-made multi-millionaire, and the author of more than 70 books.]
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Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: The Value of Higher Education

It’s more important than ever to have a college education. But the best thing is to have a graduate degree. Here’s why…

According to a Harvard University study, employers are paying college graduates 75 percent more than high school grads. Twenty-five years ago, they were paying only 40 percent more.

That’s good news for anyone who has finished college. Bad news for anyone who hasn’t. People with graduate school degrees have done even better.

That doesn’t surprise me. Education is pretty bad in America. It was much better 100 years ago. Today, a high-school degree doesn’t even guarantee that you are literate. And you can get a bachelor’s degree with huge gaps in what you know - without having read Shakespeare or mastered algebra or learned to speak a foreign language, for instance.

Getting a college degree today is like getting a high-school degree in 1890. Getting a master’s degree today is like getting a bachelor’s degree in 1950.

At the turn of the 20th century, the average American had only eight years of formal schooling. By 1930, this figure was up to about 11 years and today it is 14 years (a high-school diploma plus two years of college).

Although the general trend is up, "the quality and quantity of educated workers isn’t growing nearly as fast as it did in the past nor as fast as it needs to if the fruits of today’s prosperity are to be widely shared." So says David Wessel, writing for The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. ranks well, but not at the top of the list of countries that have seen an increase in higher education. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that six countries have equaled us and six have surpassed us.

Income is up for college grads, but only on a relative basis. If you take inflation into account, the increase in income that college graduates have enjoyed in recent years has not quite kept up with inflation. This is not true for people with graduate degrees.

That’s one of the reasons why, when I’m asked, I recommend that young people stay in school or go back to school at night till they have a master’s degree. Neither of my two older sons has done that yet. I hope they do.

My third son is thinking of attending the University of Denver, which has an interesting five-year degree that I like: four years of liberal arts education and then a master’s degree in business. That’s a combination I’d recommend to anyone who wants to be optimally competitive in today’s economy. Get your bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, because that is the best way to achieve the basic skills: reading well, writing well, speaking well, and thinking well. And then get a master’s degree in business so you don’t have to play catch-up, like I did, when you get serious about a career.
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Word to the Wise: Eviscerate

To "eviscerate" (ih-VIS-uh-rate) - from the Latin for "internal organs" - is to disembowel.

Example (as used by Jennifer Senior in a New York Times review of The Lady Upstairs, a biography of Katherine Graham): "Because she wrote a Pulitzer-winning memoir and presided over The Washington Post’s evisceration of Richard Nixon, Katherine Graham is probably the best-known woman to have published an American newspaper."
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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2030, 05-01-07], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.
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