When these two team up, Big Brother may really be watching you

Think of all the times you’ve gone online to get your health questions answered — whether it was about a nagging cough, a painful joint, or a suspicious mole or lump.

Well, the next time you conduct a health search in the privacy of your own home, you may have our government and one of the world’s largest corporations looking over your shoulder.

Reporters at Bloomberg News have discovered that the FDA and Google are in talks to monitor and share what health information you’re researching online.

They’re claiming it’s to learn about dangerous reactions you might be having with prescription drugs. But it’s starting to look more like a power grab to help make Google and Big Pharma make a fortune.

All by tracking, turning over — and maybe even selling — your most private health information.

Down into the data mine

When it comes to tracking potentially life-threatening drug reactions, our government has a serious problem. And leave it to one of the largest corporate spies in history to come up with a solution.

More than 700,000 Americans are rushed to the ER each year after having an adverse reaction to a prescription drug — that’s enough to fill 10 NFL stadiums.

But as I’ve told you before, only a small fraction of those events are ever reported to the FDA.

That’s where Evgeniy Gabrilovich comes in.

He’s a senior staff research scientist at Google who specializes in data mining. He’s also the guy who’s been talking to the FDA.

Gabrilovich and Google believe that by monitoring our search results, they can learn about adverse drug events that don’t get reported to the FDA. So if you did a search on antidepressants and suicidal thoughts, for example, Google could watch and turn the info over to the government.

In fact, when he was working for Yahoo a couple of years ago, Gabrilovich tracked 176 million searches on drug reactions. He even published a paper claiming the tactic — which feels like it’s right out of an NSA or CIA handbook — could help track problem meds.

Of course, one man’s “data mining” is another man’s spying. We know that nobody spies on us like Google — and that’s why this is starting to look a lot more like a moneymaking ploy than a public health campaign.

Google tracks everything from our Internet searches to our email contacts and it’s all to sell advertising. Including to drug companies looking to sell meds to people with your condition.

Even tech giant Microsoft has warned Internet users that Google is sharing your personal info without ever telling you.

You can bet Google plans to make a killing selling ads around your searches on drug reactions. Maybe even to companies marketing other prescription meds to help you deal with the side effects or adverse events.

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t think our government needs to know every time you conduct what should be a private search about an itchy rash or even a psychological problem.

Because I don’t trust the FDA to keep that health information private — and out of drug company hands — any more than I trust Google.

In fact, just a few years ago, a director in the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety said the agency sees Big Pharma “as its client, whose interests it must represent and advance.”

Funny, I always thought we taxpayers were our government’s clients.

Fortunately, if you want to keep your health searches to yourself, there are ways to jump off the Google grid and avoid this madness.

First, you can use one of several search engines that don’t mine your data. Startpage.com actually takes your search, goes to Google for you, and returns with the results. You get the same response you would get from Google, but you don’t get tracked.

If you want to really strengthen your wall of privacy, you can use a service called Anonymizer.com. They charge a yearly fee, but they promise to make all your Internet activity completely untraceable.

Even 10 years ago, it would have seemed crazy to go to these lengths to protect our privacy. But when Google execs and FDA officials start shaking hands, staying anonymous never seemed so sane.

Sources:

“Your Google searches could help the FDA find drug side effects” Bloomberg News, July 15, 2015, bloomberg.com