The Rhetoric of Health Care Misinformation
What is it about chain e-mails that makes potentially reasonable people who might even be wary of believing everything they read -- at least when it comes to stories generated by media outlets -- so gullible and so willing to latch on to hyperbolic distortions and ideologically driven misinformation campaigns?
What is it about chain e-mails that makes potentially reasonable people who might even be wary of believing everything they read — at least when it comes to stories generated by media outlets — so gullible and so willing to latch on to hyperbolic distortions and ideologically driven misinformation campaigns?
This echo-chamber effect is magnified by talk radio and television news demagogues, not to mention elected officials, and it’s what appears to be happening with the contentious national debate over health care reform. Witness, for example, the “death panel” notion advanced last week (via Facebook, no less) by Sarah Palin, who seems to be taking a page from Phyllis Schlafly’s rhetorical playbook. If Americans really believe that President Obama (the Magic Nero?) is going to have the power to give the thumbs-down ruling on their loved ones’ lives, having bestowed himself with some sinister form of euthanasia-oriented veto power, what else might they be willing to swallow? USA Today’s editorial staff pulled together some answers to that question.
Dig, Root, GrowUSA Today:
— Socialism. It’s hard not to smile when critics warn darkly that health care reform means “socialism” or a “government takeover” of health care, since these same critics are usually staunch supporters of government-run Medicare, one of the closest things to socialism in the USA. Despite charges that President Obama and the Democrats really want the sort of single-payer, government-run systems in Canada or Britain, nothing in the legislation even comes close.
This year, we’re all on shaky ground, and the need for independent journalism has never been greater. A new administration is openly attacking free press — and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
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Health & Wellness
The Netherlands allows medically assisted euthanasia for extreme mental suffering. Some doctors question the guardrails.
Euthanasia has been legal for adults in Belgium for a dozen years, and now the age limit on the practice is about to be lifted in that country.
Public memory often has a short shelf life, and it doesn't preclude the potential for rapid recycling, according to The New York Times' take on the current "death panel" controversy, considering that a prototypical version of this particular argument made the rounds during the (Internet-enabled) Clinton era.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian, whose controversial work as a euthanasia advocate earned him both the nickname "Dr. Death" and time in the slammer, has a new crusade: to win a seat in Congress. Stranger things have been known to happen in American politics.
After spending eight years in the slammer on a second-degree murder conviction, Dr. Jack Kevorkian (that's him in the blue cardigan), a.k.a. "Dr. Death," is once again a free man -- and he hasn't changed his belief that terminally ill patients have the right to die.
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