AlphaMale

He'll even pay for Michael Jackson's physical exam

Ian Halperin is the writer who claimed Michael Jackson needs a lung transplant due to Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency.

Jackson's spokesman said this was a "total fabrication."

This week, Halperin offered  to clear up this whole disagreement by generously paying for a physical exam for Jackson.

Halperin is still claiming to be an award-winning investigative reporter for Rolling Stone, a claim the magazine itself says is false. (But it keeps getting reported as if it were true.)

Tsk, tsk. Who can you believe?

Well, believe this: No physical exam is necessary to decide whether Michael Jackson has Alpha-1 or not.

A simple blood test is all it takes.

Though Halperin doesn't seem to know that.

If the doctor says that, the doctor is an ass

Ten years ago, a lung specialist told a woman I know:

"You have Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. There's no cure. You have about five years to live."

I know a LOT of doctors. I like and respect most of them. I have a decent regard for the work involved in getting an MD degree, the basic ability required to achieve it, the difficult and stressful work that most doctors do.

But THAT doctor, when he made THAT statement, was being an ass, an idiot, a fool, an ignoramus. Oh, yes: a fake, too. He knew next to nothing about Alpha-1, and he was too arrogant to admit it.

How DARE he tell that woman how long she had to live? Would HE want to be told he had five years to live? By some jerk who didn't know what he was talking about -- but pretended he did?

The doctor was full of crap. Let me count just a few of the ways.

1. The doctor knew next to nothing about Alpha-1. It's always the guys who don't know much about it who read a little bit in their medical reference book, then say wildly inaccurate things that cause their patients the most fear and heartache.

2. The doc had no way of knowing how long the woman had to live.

3. Even if the doc had been a world-class expert in Alpha-1, he STILL wouldn't have known how long the woman had to live. Of course a true expert would never pretend he could make an accurate prediction.

4. That ignorant fool of a doctor had a lot of company. I've heard the story all too often: the doctor gives an Alpha this scary-sounding diagnosis, then says, "You only have about five years to live."

For some reason, five years seems to be a popular estimate, but I hear two years is common as well.

So I asked a real world-class Alpha specialist if there's any medical evidence to support that five-years-to-live estimate. Surprise: There is none.

How KitKat became Number 1

KitKat is one of the best-selling candy bars in America.

Says Wikipedia:

In recent years, Kit Kats have also become very popular in Japan, a phenomenon attributed to the coincidental similarity between the bar's name and the Japanese phrase kitto katsu, roughly translating as "I hope you succeed!" This has reportedly led to parents and children buying them for school examination days as a sort of good luck charm.

True enough. But it didn't happen by coincidence. It happened by a brilliant, subtle, incredibly patient advertising and public relations campaign.

Year 1: Hotels in Tokyo began giving complementary KitKat bars to students who came to the city by the thousands to take the fiercely competitive university entrance exams. The KitKat was presented as a little "lucky charm". Students were surprised and touched. They didn't know the candy giveaway was sponsored by the manufacturer.

Year 2: The advertising agency behind this stealth campaign wangled some news stories (not ads) about the hotels' candy giveaway. The reason for the stealth: Japanese young people are suspicious and scornful of advertising.

Year 3: Some ads began to appear. They didn't look like ads. They were cute little stories about teachers, mothers, students and the lucky charm. The ads were fiction, but real Japanese moms began packing KitKats for their kids when they left home to take the exams.

Year 4: Real people began to appear in the ads that didn't look like ads. No product was ever shown. Just a subtle little KitKat logo.

And KitKat -- a candy that's been around for 70 years, that was considered just a few years ago an old-fashioned candy in Japan, the opposite of trendy or cool -- became Japan's top seller.

Besides sales, here's how the success of KitKat's Japanese advertising campaign is tracked: Number of mentions in the press and in personal blogs, which are booming in Japan. The blogs are often emotional and touching. Japanese moms post loving and fearful notes about sending their kids off to the examinations, making sure they have their lucky KitKats.