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While in many cases such reluctance to explain a product's functionality might create suspicion in the minds of potential customers, for the Stimulator taciturnity is an asset. That's because its target market is one of the most vulnerable, easy-to-manipulate ones there is: people who suffer from chronic pain. These people are at their wit's end. Day after day they wake up hurting and they get no relief. Science fails them. They go to doctors, they take drugs, they undergo therapies and perhaps even surgeries, and still their pain remains. In response, they grow desperate, they begin to seek magic cures. Miracles. They don't want to know how something works, because in hearing the particulars, they may recognize techniques or therapies that have already failed them. They just want to hear that something does work, that at last relief is in sight.

And the people who market the Stimulator are happy to tell them that. Over and over and over, until desperate hope blooms into foolish action, and people pick up the phone to make the call that will change their lives.

Oh, yes, there is a moment, after the 800 number for ordering the product has been displayed on the screen several times already, when Lee explains that "nothing works 100% of the time on 100% of the people." But this moment passes quickly, and it's carefully sandwiched between a man who claims that it was "a blessing of God that the Stimulator came into my life when it did" and testimony from a man who is identified as a minister. In the midst of promised miracles and heartfelt reassurances, with the sincere importunings of average American pain sufferers and celebrity pain sufferers alike still ringing in one's ears, Lee's brief disclaimer has all the impact of a mild breeze after a major earthquake.