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Psoriasis group issues “60 Second Google Challenge” to Congress
(March 1, 2005) Psoriasis Cure Now, a nonprofit patient advocacy group, today challenged more than 1,000 senior Congressional staffers to spend just 60 seconds viewing pictures of psoriasis-affected skin. The stunt is the latest effort by the group to highlight the seriousness of the incurable immune disease and to increase research funding for psoriasis.
More than 1,000 Congressional staffers involved in health issues (as well as more than 1,000 journalists who cover health news) were asked to spend 60 seconds viewing psoriasis pictures at Google.com (or any other internet search engine). The Google images are here.
“They say a picture is worth a thousand words,” said Michael Paranzino, president of Psoriasis Cure Now and a psoriasis patient for two decades. “We figured this would be an unconventional, but highly effective, method of demonstrating how devastating psoriasis often is.”
Paranzino, a former Congressional staffer, noted that Hill staffers are incredibly busy and that most use Google on a daily basis.
“The volume of written material sent to Congressional offices would make speed reading guru Evelyn Wood blush,” Paranzino continued. “By asking key Congressional staff to study psoriasis for a mere 60 seconds on a popular search engine, we hope to break through the clutter and advance our contention that psoriasis research is woefully underfunded.”
Federally-funded psoriasis research declined between 1995 and 2004, at the same time research on other diseases at the National Institutes of Health soared a much-needed 148%. Government funding for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis research now stands at just 77 cents per patient annually, a tiny fraction of the amount spent on most other diseases of comparable severity and impact. There are 6.5 million Americans with psoriasis, more than 1 million of whom also have psoriatic arthritis.
“We are confident that anyone who spends 60 seconds reviewing photos of actual psoriasis patients will agree that the estimated 15,000 constituents with psoriasis in each Congressional District deserve better,” Paranzino added.
Psoriasis Cure Now has no affiliation with Google.
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