Medicines Australia (MA), the peak drug industry lobby group, has unveiled details of how much its 42 member companies (and one non-member) spent in the last half of 2007 on each one of over 14,000 events that were designed to promote their drugs to doctors. In a backgrounder, MA claimed that under its self-regulatory code of conduct "the provision of lavish hospitality is banned." (The actual provision sets no thresholds for what constitutes "lavish" hospitality.) However, buried in the hundreds of pages of the reports are unprecedented details of expensive drug industry events. Roche spent $A511,791 on a three-day hepatitis symposium attended by 337 specialists at Melbourne's Grand Hyatt hotel. AstraZeneca forked out over $A514,000 for a weekend seminar at Crown Casino in Melbourne that was attended by 220 gastroenterologists and Pfizer spent $A340,000 on a cardiovascular forum for 220 specialists.

"Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," suggests a 2006 study written for the U.S. military's Special Operations Command. "Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence ... to pass the U.S. message." However, the study warns, "people do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust." In addition to recruiting, building or promoting blogs friendly to the U.S. military, the study suggests hacking an "enemy blog" to use it "covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. ... Subtly changing the messages and data -- merely a few words or phrases -- may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger's credibility. ... The enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and [may] take down the site (and the blogger) themselves." A U.S. Special Operations Command spokesperson told Wired that the study's suggestions "are not 'actionable,' merely thought provoking."