Times Online of London gives us a short compendium of the worst statistical trash – mainly on health – promptly published by the mass-media without one ounce of verification. The piece almost speaks for itself.
The reason the mass-media promptly published this trash (which includes some garbage about passive smoking in England: by no means all of it) is not just bad faith (sensationalism for the sake of sales), or sloppy cut-and-paste jobs to fill the columns and seem “concerned” about health. There is another problem – perhaps the most fatal of all: this trash is immediately published because it comes from presumed "authority" – especially “public health” authority.
You see, politicians can be called crooks and do get attacked by the media, sometimes. A minister of defence who under-equips soldiers in Iraq can come under fire; a minister of finance who makes errors in budgets can be called an incompetent or a crook, and so on, but if the very same "public servant" gets to sit on the chair of the minister of health – say in a government reshuffle – everything changes.
He or she becomes untouchable. If the minister fires out lies on totally indemonstrable active or passive smoking mortality, the lies are reported as gospel, and complete with embellishments and panic buttons. If the fool spits out “social costs” for obesity by commissioning a few hundreds of thousands to crooks in some university for a statistical scam job well done, the figures are reported as true – and more panic buttons are pushed.
If the minister harms or kills smokers or the obese by denying them surgical operations, there are no negative comments by the mass-media. Proposals to cheat citizens out of their social contract by denying treatments after they paid decades of tax contributions just because their lifestyles are no longer what the government likes are reported without a shred of criticism or any expression of humane concern. When frail and ill senior citizens are forced to smoke outside at 30 degrees below zero by the heartless bastards of Tobacco Control the media don’t flinch – but if it was learned that treatment like that was dished to a dog, the master would not last a day because the law, and the media, would skin him alive.
No matter what they do, “public health authorities” are never killers, bastards, or crooks – they are not even the subject of political humour or cartoons, for no believer would make a funny cartoon of God. Ministry of Health and other fallacious Healthist press releases get reported as unimpeachable "news", without comment, or with editorial spin in favour of the faulty source. Are the reports senseless, or hysterical, or otherwise egregious? Ask not: the statements are ordained, and after all, when the Lord victimizes it is of course for the victims’ “own good”. Egregiousness is acceptable here. No game of the gods is too filthy. The media just play along.
The police, the government, even the bureaucracy are susceptible of being criticized by the media but always “public health” institutions are not. Thus they get away with the biggest frauds, the most contemptible behaviours, and policies that stem directly from the Nazi doctrine. The almighty pharmaceutical pushers support the almighty medical elite which supports the almighty health minister who supports them back and returns to their payrolls (if he’s ever left them) upon retiring from the ministry. Public deception and corruption thrive under the approving noses of the press. The public, dazzled with the magic of generalised scares and statistical nonsense, and bamboozled by the media that report it, listen, and quake, and learn to fear, and hate.
It is high time that “public health authorities” come under the same fire that is aimed at the politicians sitting next to them – because politicians they are, even if they hide under a white coat. Until they are checked ethical and political rot will eat away unceasingly on society.
If we want to show that we are a truly evolved society, as we like to believe, it is high time that we stop deferring to the medicine men. These were the feathered fellows who held the real political power in the tribe, holding even the chief hostage in deference to their "magical" powers, and into this primitive situation we have allowed ourselves to return. Curses have become fabricated statistics, ointments have become smoking cessation potions, white coats replace bright feathers, but here we are again. It’s time to grow up.
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