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- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!pitt!speedy.cs.pitt.edu!km
- From: km@speedy.cs.pitt.edu (Ken Mitchum)
- Newsgroups: sci.med
- Subject: Re: 60 Minutes-Heart Disease & The French
- Message-ID: <15861@pitt.UUCP>
- Date: 28 Jul 92 12:59:23 GMT
- References: <1992Jul23.134416.18902@news.columbia.edu> <1992Jul23.220715.17142@pixel.kodak.com> <1992Jul28.005145.229@ttinews.tti.com>
- Sender: news@cs.pitt.edu
- Reply-To: km@cs.pitt.edu (Ken Mitchum)
- Organization: Computer Science Dept., University of Pittsburgh
- Lines: 29
-
- In article <1992Jul28.005145.229@ttinews.tti.com> hollombe@polymath.tti.com (The Polymath) writes:
- >"60 Minutes" exists to sell TV ad slots, period. They do this by
- >presenting sensationalized rubbish to attract their target audience. A
- >balanced presentation of correct information isn't even on their agenda.
-
- This is not only true for "60 Minutes" but for the media in general.
- The few times in my life that I have been involved with something
- covered by the national media, I have been very impressed with how
- many errors they commit, and how they twist things to suit their
- purposes. And I'm a liberal!
-
- "60 Minutes" did a piece a few years ago on how greedy doctors were.
- They took a patient with end stage renal disease on dialysis, and
- showed the bill for his care in the hospital the last few weeks
- of his life. In addition to the "$1 cotton balls", they went after
- everything, regardless of whether the doctor made money on it or not!
- My favorite was "daily blood tests", which they got some hick
- doctor to ridicule ("Well, gee, I never do that on my patients.")
- but which were probably mandatory on this patient, whose wife had
- no doubt told the doctors to "do everything you can." They somehow
- got the listeners to believe that the doctor was making money
- by these blood tests.
-
- -Ken Mitchum MD
- km@cs.pitt.edu
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