Lindsay Lohan brings enough problems on herself. She doesn’t need unethical professionals to make her life even more chaotic by violating her privacy rights. Continue reading
Health and Medicine
Lying to Mom
The call was from my mother’s case worker at the hospital.
The night before, my mother, 89, had fallen in her apartment, the seventh fall in ten days and, like the others, a direct result of her stubborn refusal to use a cane or a walker despite her unsteadiness. This time she had not been able to dissuade me from taking her to the emergency room, where we both lingered until nearly 6 AM as she was X-rayed, CAT-scanned, and given a battery of tests. The staff felt she needed to be checked-in to stay for a couple of days, especially since she was hallucinating. I agreed, over Mom’s protests; it would also provide me some more time to figure out how to prepare my home for her to move in, at least temporarily. There is no way I am going to let her fall again.
Now the case worker was calling to tell me that my mother was resisting treatment. She wanted to go home, she said, and was physically resisting efforts to give her an M.R.I. Would I please come over and persuade her?
The hospital was only fifteen minutes away, and as I drove there, I pondered various strategies. With my mother, you get one shot. If your first argument doesn’t persuade her, nothing will. I could explain why the M.R.I. would help the doctors clear her for release, but that one could backfire if the test revealed something that in fact led to a longer stay. One ploy kept pushing itself to the front of the line: Continue reading
“Lie of the Year”? Hardly.
PolitiFact, the political fact-checking website, has once again announced its “Lie of the Year”:
“PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections. Readers of PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times’ independent fact-checking website, also chose it as the year’s most significant falsehood by an overwhelming margin. (Their second-place choice was Rep. Michele Bachmann’s claim that Obama was going to spend $200 million a day on a trip to India, a falsity that still sprouts.)”
This tells us a lot about PolitiFact. Continue reading
Anatomy of an Unethical Class Action Lawsuit, Badly Reported, Exposed by a Blogger
Here is how the Washington Post begins its story about the most recent assault on McDonald’s by the people who want to control your eating and parenting habits:
“The D.C.-based nutrition watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest has helped a California mother file a class-action suit against McDonald’s, demanding that the burger chain stop marketing toys to children. The woman, Monet Parham of Sacramento, claims that the marketing of Happy Meal toys has interfered with her ability as a parent to provide her two children with a healthful diet. Here’s a quote:
“I am concerned about the health of my children and feel that McDonald’s should be a very limited part of their diet and their childhood experience,” Parham said. “But as other busy, working moms and dads know, we have to say ‘no’ to our young children so many times, and McDonald’s makes it that so much harder to do. I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat.”
This is fairly typical of the hundreds of news stories on the web about the lawsuit. Over at Popehat, Patrick, the wittiest of the site’s witty staff, performs a crushing dissection of the lawsuit, the story, and the media’s incompetent reporting of it. You see, he writes..
“…Monet Parham is really Monet Parham-Lee. Monet Parham-Lee is the name that Monet Parham uses professionally. Monet Parham-Lee is represented in the suit by attorneys affiliated with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Meaning Ralph Nader. Monet Parham-Lee is an employee of the California Department of Public Health. Monet Parham-Lee works in the “Cancer Prevention and Nutrition Section” of the California Department of Public Health. Meaning that Monet Parham-Lee is tasked, professionally, by the State of California with ensuring that Californians eat their vegetables. The power that the State of California grants Monet Parham-Lee evidently is not enough. Monet Parham-Lee is taking the law into her own hands, to ensure that not only her own children eat their vegetables, but that everyone else is forced to make their children eat vegetables.” Continue reading
Ethics Observation of the Week: the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto
Dissecting a Washington Post op-ed in which Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius argued for the constitutionality of Obamacare, Wall Street Journal wit and political commentator James Taranto argued that the two Obama officials…
“…can’t even muster a coherent argument in favor of ObamaCare as a matter of policy. The op-ed opens with what is meant to be a heartstring-tugging anecdote: Continue reading
Rush, E-Cigarettes and the Niggardly Principle
Rush Limbaugh was enjoying himself hugely yesterday, as he usually does, relating one more way that he has devised to tweak America’s Enemies of Freedom.
The radio talk show king’s topic was electronic cigarettes, those increasingly popular devices that deliver a nicotine jolt while emitting faux “smoke” (it’s only odorless water vapor), all while looking like a real cigarette—the tip even glows red when you puff it. Rush keeps the things handy, he explains, to provide a balm to his nicotine cravings when he is in public places, but even more so, it seems, to annoy anti-smoking zealots. Rush gets a rush when he pulls out the plastic devices and observes reflexive coughs and frowns from those in his vicinity who regard cigarettes as the equivalent of rotting cats. Continue reading
Commonwealth of Virginia v. Sibelius Ethics
From the Associated Press, the big story of the day:
“A federal judge declared the foundation of President Barack Obama’s health care law unconstitutional Monday, ruling that the government cannot require Americans to purchase insurance. The case is expected to end up at the Supreme Court.”
This matter, as the AP suggests, is far from settled. I just finished the opinion, which will be more accessible tomorrow. Two ethical conclusions jump out from it, however. Continue reading
Unethical Quote of the Day: The Associated Press
“Meyer has a recurring burning sensation in his chest that doctors told him last week would raise cardiovascular risk factors if he continued to coach, the person told The Associated Press Sunday on condition of anonymity because Meyer’s health issues are confidential.”
—From a story by the Associated Press on the surprise resignation of Urban Meyer as head coach of the University of Florida’s football team because of health issues.
That’s right: Meyer’s medical issues are so confidential that the AP’s duty is to protect the anonymous source who violated the coach’s right of privacy (and maybe the law) by disclosing them. And, of course, the AP accepts no accountability for laundering this information, because the public has a right to know….wait a minute…it doesn’t, does it?
Thanks to James Taranto for the quote.
Spin or Fairness? Fox News and “the public option”
Media watchdog Howard Kurtz’s latest column for “The Daily Beast” illustrates how tricky achieving both objective and accurate journalism can be difficult, and sometimes impossible.
Examining Fox’s coverage of the health care reform debate, he discloses that after Republican pollster Frank Luntz tipped off Fox Tea Party booster and talking head Sean Hannity that the public was favorable to something called “the public option.” but suspicious of the same provision when it was referred to as “the government option.” Shortly thereafter, when the Senate Democrats introduced a health care bill with a public insurance option, Fox News vice president and Washington managing editor Bill Sammon sent the news staff a memo: Continue reading
As Sick Children Suffer for Congressional Incompetence
For reasons no one has yet explained, a provision in the new health care reform law removes a previously Congressionally-mandated discount to children’s hospitals for drugs used to treat so-called “orphan diseases,” illnesses that are not common enough for the drugs to be profitable. Pharmaceutical companies have begun notifying the hospitals that they no longer qualify for the discounts, and the change will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as put sick kids at risk. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 