Talking Points Memo ran a piece yesterday on Rudy Giuliani, and his bogus ads on health care. Guiliani has claimed that survival rates from prostate cancer are much higher in the US than in Britain, attributing the difference to the inherent failures of “socialized medicine.” And even though Giuliani’s “facts” have been thoroughly debunked, he and his campaign continue to repeat the lie.
But of course, this isn’t really about prostate cancer or health care reform. As TPM’s Greg Sargent points out, it’s about whether working journalists are willing to continue to let lying politicians play them for chumps.
Memo to media: Rudy and his campaign think you’re a bunch of chumps. They have nothing but complete contempt for the truth and for everything that purportedly led you all to become journalists. Maybe it’s time to get serious about what this guy is up to.
It reminds me of a similar situation closer to home: our local media’s absolute refusal to reexamine the lie that forms the basis of Dave Reichert’s entire political career… they myth that he caught the Green River Killer.
In fact, Reichert was the detective who didn’t catch Gary Ridgeway, and who allowed him to go on killing young woman for another 18 years. Every time Reichert deflects a political question with some anecdote about looking Ridgeway straight in the eyes, he insults the memory of the victims he personally failed. But damn if our local media is willing to objectively investigate the truth when they are as much responsible for the myth-making as Reichert himself.
It was a bungled investigation. They had Ridgeway. And they let him go. Voters deserve to know the truth.
Any journalist that does their job will be labeled as a “liberal” and attacked by the right wing nutjobs. Is Bill Moyers a liberal, or does he just report the news the msm ignores? Remember what Colbert said. “Reality has a liberal bias…..”
All Facts Support My Positions
Reality has no bias. Refusing to investigate in your face corruption, fraud, waste, abuse, injustice, and lying is the job of the “new” media right?
Remember, Newscorp is the largest news organization. Go figure……
My dad is getting surgery for prostate cancer today. He’s probably actually just getting into the recovery room right now.
Fortunately, he works for the state so he has great health care, it was caught early, and he will probably be fine. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could say that for our entire nation?
The misuse of science is horrible and RG SHOULD be called on it. Anyone want to bet that will ever happen?
I actually did take a quick look at some of the data and RG’s numbers may not be all that wrong .. just his conclusions! I wrote it up at SJ, but for now the trick is this. WE do a great job of early diagnosis here of this cancer. So great that many of the people we find will not have any symptoms or die for many, many years .. maybe never in older folks. Some feel that this is an over diagnosed cancer and there is a lot of controversy about who should and should not be treated.
The cool thing to do would be for an opponent of this Rovian misuse of statistics to learn the fact and then face hizzoner on the issues. Wanna bet that will happen before the gen election if ever?
BTW, similar absurd misuse of science happens on both sides. For example many iberals insist ther eis not geneitc basis for intelligence. That too is an absurd claim. Similarly, i had the opportunity (I was PAID by the bad guys) to review the literature on bystander effects of smoking. Cough cough .. the stuff smells bad and I should not have to put up with that but there are only a few places where there is any likelihood of enough smoke to be a serious issue.
The mythology goes on and on:
asbestos: by and large it is harmless.
marijiuana, silicon breast implants, depleted uranium, agent orange … probably all harmless. Vit C, antioxidants, fish oils, proab do nothing. intelligence prob. is partly genetic but “American Blacks” are not genetically “African” even if it ere true that for some wierd reason “Africans had less intelligence than Euroes. etc etc etc
Abuse of science is wrong. Personally i think we should create a non-government, international court to rule on such issues.
The way the neocons deal with science reminds me of Planet of the Apes.
Hey Goldy, did you actually read that first link?
“Don McCanne, a senior health policy fellow at Physicians for a National Health Program, conceded that the five-year survival rate for cancer diagnoses is higher in the United States than in many countries that have single-payer systems, though the disparity is not as great as Giuliani claims in his ad.”
“But he said that any such comparison is flawed, since it fails to take into account the additional investment in cancer education and screening in the United States. Much of the gap would be closed if other countries invested similar sums in catching cancer early.”
So, Giuliani was right, but it was an unfair comparison because we have private industry and the other countries with socialized medicine don’t?
McCanne, your side’s advocate, conceded Giuliani was right, but won’t get specific on the numbers? How can you all eat up his words without a shred of proof, and then in your next breath call Giuliani a liar? WTF? Are you people insane?
Exelizabeth, did you read that last line in the above quote? Your father would be dead in most other countries because they don’t cover the early checks that saved his life. That was said by the advocate for your view point. There is no arguing about it when he concedes the point.
Government run health care kills people. Plain, simple and easily proven.
Phil missed the next two paragraphs:
If all Americans had access to preventive care, screenings, and treatment — through a single-payer system or another universal healthcare plan — the five-year survival rate would almost certainly be increased, since cancers would be caught sooner.
“It’s not a result of the healthcare-financing issue. That’s not what this is about at all,” McCanne said. “Under a universal system, we would increase access to preventive screening.”
I wonder why he left those off…
@6 …you misunderstand. The 5 yr survival change is NOT necessarily because more people survive due to therapy , but because early diagnosis includes poeple with less disease who would survive anyway.
@5 You have it way off. The Brit was no saying that the American stress on early detectionj saves lives. Actually this is very controlversial and many physicians question the net benefot to society of early detection since many prostatic cancers are slow grwoing and since essentially all men eventually get it.
The issue in a socialized system OR a for profit system is whether you spend unlimitted dollars on detectiojn so that a relatively few patients will benefit? The answer in BOTH systems is bottom line. If you buy more early detection anjd this increases costs do you spend less money on .. e.g. bone marrow transplants?
In England, that decision ..for better or wrse .. is made at a socialist level, hopefully trying to do the best for every patient. In the US that decision is made by a decreasing number of of HMO’s and insurance companies trying to maximize profit.
The real issue for a conservative is that the American system is private but NOT free market. If the latter were true you would be able to choose a health care provider based on some sort of data on their mix od benefits, Try it!
Finally, what happend in Britain was a decsion of where to go with therapy. Rightly or wrongly the Brits adopted the American practice about five years ago and, as expected, the data are now fairly similar. Does thais mean men in the US are living longer? No.
Ahh,Seatle Jew – most of what you say is fairly supportable by science – but the fish oil part is pathetically ill-informed. Read the literature – 3 meals of cold-water fish per week cause a greater than 40% decrease in CVD risk (more than statin drugs). The link between diet and CVD is well documented – I refer you also to Ornish et al.
Oh, and marijuana – not all that harmless to the lungs – again – read the literature.
So don’t spout off about misuse of science, when some of what you say isn’t supported by the scienctific literature.
One other word of caution – just because something hasn’t proven to be harmful yet in the literature – doesn’t mean that it is not harmful. Sometimes the definitive study has just not been done yet – or has not been funded.