From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Mon Aug 09 2004 - 00:26:15 BST
Platt Holden:
A boorishly predictable response. When a liberal doesn't like the message,
he attacks the messenger.
dmb replies:
That's just silly. If we're evaluating the reliability of a news
organization then we are evaluating their validity AS A MESSENGER. It not a
matter attacking the guy who gives us news we'd rather not hear, its a
matter of attacking the guy who can't deliver the message properly. So, when
it comes to media criticism, of course it involves scrutinizing the
messenger.
Platt continued:
In my response to Ant McWatt on July 16, 2004
(available in the archives) I included the following from The Guardian, a
newspaper recommended for its reliability, or so Anthony claimed, by
Pirsig:
"The NHS has a severe shortage of capacity, directly costing the lives of
tens of thousands of patients a year. We have fewer doctors per head of
population than any European country apart from Albania. We import nurses
and doctors from the world's poorest countries, and export sick people to
some of the richest. More than one million people - one in sixty of the
population - are waiting for treatment. They are waiting far too long,
every step of the way - for the first appointment with a GP, for initial
consultation with a specialist, for diagnosis and for treatment. Patients
needing heart bypasses often have to wait over a year for treatment. One
in four cardiac patients die while waiting and one in five lung cancer
patients wait so long they go from being treatable to untreatable. The
cancer survival rate in Britain is lower for cancers than almost all other
developed nations. World Health Organisation figures show that if the UK
had the same cancer survival rates as the European average, it would save
10,000 lives a year; if we had the best in Europe, it would save 25,000
lives a year."
dmb replies:
You've helped me make my point. The Gaurdian article discusses these
problems without putting the blame on socialism. In fact, the other European
nations that are doing better than the UK are socialized too. The article
makes it pretty clear that they are understaffed and that's the major
problem. The Sun, by contrast, illogoically asserted the idea that
socialized medicine is inherently connected to dirty hands. The assertion
that medicine in the UK has problems is not ridiculous or untrue. But it's
bogus to fix the blame as they did.
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