I’m always suspicious of motives, sometimes overly so. When I browsed through the fluffy Parade Magazine that comes with the Sunday paper and read about Rob Lowe’s involvement in cancer research working with Amgen (this was in the “In Step With” column), my first thought was “shill! shill!”. Bells rang in my head when he said “I’m not endorsing any medicine…[but] talk to your doctor about infection…” But the article also mentioned that he has lost relatives to cancer and his dad has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, so I felt guilty about my cynicism. Then I read in Salon that Lowe has “recently embarked on a drug-company sponsored awareness campaign for a cancer-related illness called febrile neutropenia that will reportedly net him $1 million.” My cynicism came back. I appreciate that people can get paid (and paid well) to raise awareness, so I don’t fault him or anyone for making money hawking anything. But it’s good to know all the motives. When he says he’s not endorsing any medicine, but he clearly is “raising awareness” for Amgen’s Neulasta, it makes me feel duped. Raise your own awareness about health issues and products by researching why people say what they say. Lowe has good intentions, I’m sure, but he’s being paid too.