Over the past few weeks thousands of Russian bloggers have united to combat a pharmaceutical scam that tried to persuade Russian pensioners to spend around half of their annual pension on a course of Gravikol 21 - ‘anti-arthritis’ drugs that were actually little more than vitamin pills.

In the course of their campaign, Russia’s bloggers have not only publicised the scam nationwide, they’ve forced the notoriously unresponsive Russian government to act.

In perhaps the most startling expression of their offline power, Russia’s bloggers made 21 million (!) phone calls to the offending company’s switchboard, forcing it into meltdown.

The story has hardly been heard outside of Russia - try a Google News search for Gravikol, if you don’t believe me - but it will fundamentally alter perceptions of how Russian bloggers can influence Russian public life.

How Russia’s Bloggers discovered the Gravikol 21 scam

Early in October, blogger Brockhurst received a telephone call from his elderly mother, desperate for money to buy expensive anti-arthritis medication she had heard advertised on the radio. Incensed that his mother had been so desperate to buy these drugs that she had been in tears on the phone, he did a litle digging, and on October 12 rockhurst posted the news about Gravikol on his blog:

“These drugs cost R30,000 (approximately $1,500), but for today for one day only they are offering a discount for pensioners and this essential medicine for the elderly costs just R22,000 ($890). A courier will come for the money tonight… She said she had heard a radio program on which well-known cardiologists with unfamiliar surnames recommended that all elderly people use the medicine Gravikol 21 for joint pain. Take the course of 38 packets and your joints won’t trouble you for 10 years. Cardiologists. About joints — huh? Recommendations — bastards.”

(The above link is in Russian - click here for a Google Translation)

In fact, Gravikol 21 (also known as Gravikoll 21 or just plain Gravicol) was little more than “gelatin mixed with ascorbic acid and fruit flavoring.” Arthritis sufferers would do themselves more good by just eating healthily and taking regular vitamins.

And the cardiologists recommending Gravikol 21? Well, lets just say that they weren’t famous until after the Graviskol storm broke…

The first reaction of Russian bloggers was one of (justified) fury, and 5,000 comments were left on Brockhurst’s blog - the maximum that is allowed on a single livejournal post. Within hours, outraged fellow bloggers were also writing about, and digging deeper into, the story.

Direct action turns into phone meltdown

The bloggers fury soon turned into direct action when someone came up with the bright idea of publishing the telephone number of Farmit, the manufacturers of Gravikol 21, and suggested that everyone give them a call.

Soon Farmit’s number was posted on internet forums all over Russia for all to see. Sometimes associated with the Gravikol story, sometimes attached to ads for too good to be true real estate deals, sometimes with pictures of sexy and ‘available’ Russian girls attached…

Blogger Evgeny Morozov writes:

Most of those who called in on purpose and not because they were misinformed could be generally split into three big camps: those who hanged up or went silent after getting connected, those who tried to appeal to the decency of the Farmit staff by either cursing them or trying to reasonable explain the problem, and those who placed orders for “Gravikol 21″. This third group wrecked most havoc on the Farmit operations, possibly halting them at some point. By placing orders to non-existing locations or by canceling the orders after the couriers have arrived, the callers managed to distract Farmit from fulfilling the genuine orders. Even if it’s just one per cent of those who called in placed an order, this means that 210,000 orders had to be fulfilled within just 2-3 days, a task that sounds nearly impossible even for a big pharma company. Obviously, the ensuring effect on the moral of the couriers should not be underestimated.

Morozov reports one blogger’s estimate that Farmit’s received 21 million calls in the week after this story broke. That seems a little extreme to me, but the number of calls was clearly massive.

The tactic caused chaos at Farmit as they struggled to not only answer their phones, but to deal with the mountain of fake orders they received. In effect, as Morozov notes, the attack was an offline denial of service (DDOS) attack - and it sent Farmit’s switchboard into meltdown.

Calling in the big guns

However, this story gets more interesting when the Russian blogosphere moved beyond its initial kneejerk reaction, and turned its rage into calculated political action.

…in a popular post on 13 October well-known blogger Tatyana Tikhomirova (tanchik), a St Petersburg-based doctor, raised doubts about the real use of such actions. She wrote: “Sure, together we can block this (call) center without any problems, they will change the number and advertise the new one, but we won’t be able to block all the centers as interest in this issue will tail off… MY SUGGESTION IS NOT TO TRY TO DESTROY A SECOND CENTER OR ANY CENTER AT ALL. BUT TO TRY TO JOIN FORCES TO GET A SUBSTANTIVE RESULT….” She suggested that over the next 10 days bloggers collect together instances of advertisements that make unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of any dietary supplements, not just Gravikol 21. This material could then form the basis of an open letter of complaint to officials, which bloggers would sign via a special website and would circulate as widely as possible on the Internet and hopefully in the mainstream media. Banner for farma–fake LiveJournal community (community.livejournal.com/farma–fake, 13 October)

Source: Russia: A Week in the Russian Blogosphere, 13-19 October, OSC [US Open Source Center] Report, November 1, 2007 (not available online)

It probably helped that the story was quickly picked up by Evgeny Roizman, a Russian Duma deputy from Ekaterinburg who is also a fairly prominent livejournal blogger. Within a few days of Brockhurst’s original post, Roizman had written to the Prosecutor General’s Office, demanding that they either confirm that Farmit’s actions were legal or, otherwise, open an investigation.

The involvement of a Duma deputy, combined with the sheer number of bloggers writing about the Gravikol 21 story meant that even the Russian mainstream media couldn’t ignore the story for long. After a few brief internet and radio reports, the story hit the big time on 17 October, when State TV channel Rossiya dedicated four minutes to a report on their main evening news bulletin.

Alerting President Putin

If you really want to get something done in Russia, you go right to the top. There is a long tradition of appealing to the leader (whether he be the Tsar, Party Secretary or President) for special help, so a campaign also quickly began to bring the story to the attention of President Putin.

Fortunately, Putinwas scheduled to host his annual televised Q&A session later that week, on the 18th October. The Q&A was set up to give Russian people the opportunity to phone in and in person ask Putin’s opinion on the burning issues of the day. This was too good an opportunity for Russia’s bloggers to miss, and a sustained campaign began to get a question about Gravikol-21 on the air.

Did Russia’s bloggers win?

Sadly, despite hundreds, if not thousands of calls, nobody ever got to ask Putin a question about Gravikol-21 on the air. But it seems fairly likely that the sheer volume of calls was noticed by his office. It wasn’t long before public officials began making statements on the affair:

On 16 October RIA-Novosti reported that chief public health official Gennadiy Onishchenko called on consumers to report any cases where dietary supplements were falsely advertised, while senior Federal Antimonopoly Service official Sergey Puzyrevskiy told Izvestiya newspaper on 25 October that the service had begun preliminary inquiries about the advertisements.

Source: Russia: A Week in the Russian Blogosphere, 13-19 October, OSC [US Open Source Center] Report, November 1, 2007 (not available online)

The Graviskol 21 story isn’t over yet - nobody has been charged, and Farmit are still in business. But the word is out - big time.

It would take a courageous, not to mention stupid, government official to give Farmit the all clear now. If they did, Russia’s bloggers would just take up arms again and, this time, their target might be the government…

Update: Hat tip to Blue Bloggin, which has dug out this link to an English language product page for Gravicol (note the ‘c’ in the spelling).

In 1997, Purdue University published information with promising news that Graviola has a special affinity for helping to maintain the normal functions of DNA activities in cellular meatoblism. Gravicol tincture helps to maintain a healthy immune system

At least the company selling Gravicol in the US (Infogenesis) aren’t marketing it as an anti-arthritis drug.

The BBC has put together a fascinating statistical analysis of Russia during the Putin years.

The analysis has graphs aplenty, covering the Russia’s economy, Energy, Population (including a revealing statistic about HIV prevalence in Russia) and the Military.  Sometimes the stats are standalone, sometimes in comparison to other countries.  But all are well worth a quick look.

Yet another massive fire in Russia, and yet again dozens of people are killed because of the Russian fascination for restricting entry and exit to buildings.

The latest victims: 45 women in a drug rehabilition hospital.

The fire was caused by arson, but the deaths were largely due to the fact that there was only one exit to the building, and it was locked:

“It was a very particular building with five storeys and only one exit and bars on the windows because it was a drug treatment hospital,” said Irina Andrianova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s Emergencies Ministry.

“Judging by the placement of the bodies, they really tried to get out,” said Alexander Chupriyanov, the deputy emergency situations minister.

I understand some of the reasons for needing to keep some control over who comes and goes at a drug rehabilitation centre, of course. But this isn’t a problem limited to hospitals - it’s far more widespread than that.

I’ve written before about my own experiences of living in a student dormitory in Russia:

The typical Russian dormitory has just one entrance. If this wasn’t enough of a fire hazard, this solitary entrance is normally locked at night, preventing residents from going in or out. Ground floor windows are also barred, to prevent break-ins. Now, officially, there is supposed to be someone stationed by the locked door, so that it can be opened in an emergency. More often than not, though, the guard is either off drinking lots of vodka, or dead to the world, sleeping off the evening’s vodka.

Yes, Russia has a problem with ageing infrastructure. Some of the structural limitations of Soviet era buildings will be there for decades to come.

But that’s really no excuse for the mentality of those responsible for safety at those buildings - instead of diligently guarding and protecting their charges, they’re usually drunk.

Until that changes, we’ll see many more fire tragedies in Russia.

Update: And, with morbid timing, the day after I wrote this post, a fire at a clinic for mentally ill children in Taiga, Siberia killed eight people.  In reporting the story, the BBC note:

Russia records about 18,000 fire deaths a year, AP reports - 10 times more than in the US.

Russia has about half the population of the US, so the chances of a Russian dying in a fire are actually 20 time higher than those of an American citizen.

What do you do if you you’ve mined out your salt mine? Why, turn it into a haven for asthma sufferers, of course!

In Soviet times a spell in the salt mines was the fate of dissidents and criminals. But today the glittering tunnels below Solotvyno in western Ukraine have been transformed into a more benign destination: a haven for people with asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Doctors at Solotvyno’s allergological hospital dispatch patients to dank chambers 300 metres below ground, where a unique microclimate is said to ease their coughing and wheezing. The hospital, set among rolling hills near the border with Romania, started as a small clinic almost 30 years ago but is now a luxury complex serving about 6,000 people a year.

[…] Dr Chonka said the air in the tunnels helped to lessen the respiratory tract’s sensitivity to allergens. “People who had a number of treatment courses were cured from asthma for 15 years or more,” he said.

The hospital is said to be targetting British patients, because of the high incidence of asthma in the UK. British medical experts, however, seem to be sceptical of the health benefits. I suspect this is mostly due to the short supply of salt mines in the Home Counties.

Mosnews has an interview with the first man in the Soviet Union to be diagnosed with HIV:

Nikolay Panchenko was the first man in the Soviet Union to be diagnosed with HIV. He had to quit his job for being homosexual, then he spent four years in jail for being HIV positive, but today, at 53, he is head of the Community of People Living with HIV/AIDS in St. Petersburg and a picture of health and energy.

Was it a hard time, being HIV-positive and in prison?

Well the authorities actually hoped I would get terminated by the fellow prisoners. I was sent to the penal colony where the authorities expected other prisoners to soak me in gasoline and burn me alive. But it did not work out, I had tea with criminals and we chatted peacefully. So the authorities moved me to a solitary cell.

Wow.

It’s good to see that World AIDS Day is gaining a higher and higher profile in Russia. One of the most unusual ways I’ve seen to promote the day, in Russia or any other country, is Miss Positive 2005, a beauty contest for HIV Positive women.

“It sounds absurd, someone may say this idea is offensive, but why not hold this beauty contest among HIV-positive girls,” [Russia’s chief sanitary official Gennady] Onishchennko said at a press conference.

I have to say that my first reaction was to condemn this is a tasteless, or at best a misguided, stunt, but reading this Moscow Times report it seems that the event was portrayed quite sensitively.

The Miss Positive beauty contest was initiated by Shagi, or Steps, a magazine for HIV-positive people, and conducted anonymously over the Internet. Three winners were chosen on Nov. 16, but only one, 24-year-old Svetlana Izambayeva, agreed to attend Thursday’s awards ceremony.

“At first, it was very difficult to make up my mind to participate in the contest,” said Izambayeva, a native of the Chuvashia republic who was diagnosed with HIV in 2002 after a casual sexual encounter.

“But then I realized that my desire to speak and relate openly to the world around me could help thousands of people come to terms with their own fears,” she said in a statement. “I know very well that the fight against HIV/AIDS should not turn into a fight against people living with HIV.”

On balance, with the HIV/AIDS situation as serious as it is in Russia, anything which brings public attention to those who suffer from the disease, showing them in a positive light, has to be a good thing.

Is this Interfax report based on some bizarre misquote? I’ve only seen the quote carried by Interfax - no other news organisation has even hinted at this story.

Yushchenko said that, in five years, the number of AIDS-infected people will increased 2.5 times and reach a mortality rate of 26 infected per 100,000 citizens.

“The rates at which the disease is spreading are awful. If the rates remain constant, then Ukraine will loose 10% of its population by 2010,” Yuschenko said at the all-Ukrainian meeting of family physicians in Kharkiv.

Now, I’d never class myself as a mathematician, but I must say I’m somewhat puzzled as to how a mortality rate of 0.01% equates to the death of one in 10 Ukrainains within the next 5 years.

I guess today must be “We hate Ukrainians Because They Are All Diseased Scum Day” over at the Interfax office.

Well, if Konstantin’s source is to be believed, many in the Russian medical profession think that HIV and AIDS aren’t linked. 

“Actually, - he told me, - most of medical researchers in Russia know that Duesberg was right. That’s the main reason why Russian government itself spends kopecks on anti-AIDS projects but accepts international grants eagerly.” I was struck dumb from astonishment. “But why didn’t they say out load?” Now he smiled indulgently at my naivet?. “Can you imagine how many people became rich and famous fighting AIDS?”

Konstantin goes on to draw a parallel with the Year 2000 crisis (remember that?), where a few companies got very very rich by hyping up a nonexistent problem.

For me - who, admittedly, has no scientific proof either way as to whether HIV and AIDS are linked - the most depressing thing about this story is the way in which Russians once again are taking the easy way out, and falling back on the conspiracy theory.  "They’re all out to get us."  They, of course, are America and the capitalist system who, despite the end of the Cold War are still bent on Russia’s destruction. 

It’s all rubbish of course.  Link between HIV and AIDS or no link, the reason the Russian government "spends kopecks on anti-AIDS projects but accepts international grants eagerly" is that it can.  The Russian people, intentionally or not, remain remarkably ignorant about the threat that HIV/AIDS could pose to them, to their families.  And, because they don’t know how much of a threat it is, they don’t demand that they government take notice of the issue.  And, as long as that remains the case, the government - or, more specifically, a few people within the government, will make a killing. 

More than 300 birds in the village of Suzdalka, near Novosibirsk have died of a virus thought to be bird flu.  If confirmed, this will be Russia’s first outbreak of bird flu for more than 15 years.   Fortunately no humans appear to have contracted the virus, a variant of which (H5N1)has killed more than 50 people in South Asia.

RIA Novosti has this quote from Russia’s Chief Medical Officer, Gennady Onishchenko:

"We have been carrying out laboratory research and looking for infection among humans." He confirmed that no human cases have been found, "although not much time has passed since the virus appeared.

"We now have to ascertain how the virus entered our territory."

Suzdalka is less than 100 miles from the Kazakh border, so I’d imagine that will be the first line of enquiry.