In another piece of cherrypicking nonsense called “Clash of the anecdotes”, Peter Griffin seems to think no-one else reads newspapers. He says:
If you read today’s letters to the Sunday Star Times you’ll see the flip side of anecdotal evidence on the use of intravenous vitamin C to treat serious illness. The letter below … illustrates well why it is potentially very dangerous when people make decisions that may impact their health based on anecdotal evidence.
So let’s look a the two letters published that week, and another published the week after. He was talking about the second letter, written by anonymous....:
Peter Griffin accepts as "evidence" someone hiding in anonymity who is on chemotherapy - yet ignores letters addressing the real science issues with real names supplied.
Peter whines about several months of intravenous vitamin C including safe administration costs, doctors fees, etc...supposedly costing this woman $20,000 out of her own pocket, but doesn't blanche at the fact at least HE didn't pay a cent of it, or that people on chemo, are having way more taxpayers' money thrown their way, than $20,000. Neither does Peter complain that taxpayers will soon be funding the HUGELY expensive Herceptin, or any of the other new cancer drugs. In fact, Peter seems blithely unaware of the breadth of his own hypocrisy.
I wonder if we should go back to a fully paid "user-pays" health system, so that Peter Griffin can regain an accurate summation of what really counts in these issues (both regarding choice and cost), since money suddenly seems to have become such a big issue to him... .
And who is that group of people who yammer on about those who rely on anecdote? Sciblogs.
Typical.
