Tag: Poverty

Medical Posted on

How Corporations and Politicians Use Numbers to Lie — and How Not to Be Fooled

Do 8 out of 10 dentists really prefer Colgate? Americans, as P.T. Barnum once noted, are not all that difficult to fool, and our nation’s somewhat weak math skills don’t help. A Pew Research Center report issued last year, which studied test results of 15-year-olds, ranked the United States 35th in the world in math. Not only has this weakness in understanding numbers created opportunities for mass exploitation by Big Pharma and other industries, it has led to needless and mostly unwarranted fear. While Americans don’t understand math, be assured that corporations do, and they happily use it to mislead and obfuscate in the name of selling their products. Big Pharma doesn’t only target consumers with its misleading advertising; it also targets your doctor. And […] Read More

Drug's Posted on

Tennessee Drug Tests Welfare Applicants, Finds Just 1 Person Using Drugs

The state is using its tight welfare budget to administer the expensive tests. Tennessee is all set to deny welfare benefits to poor residents based solely on the fact that they’d used drugs. In July they rolled out a program to drug test welfare applicants, which would create even worse health issues for already-struggling addicts. However, the first month’s tests proved that most welfare applicants weren’t using drugs in the first place: of more than 800 applicants, the state caught only one person using drugs. The testing program was popularised and enacted, no doubt, in response to the stereotype that poor people who use government assistance programs tend to be drug users. But it appears that the stereotype is baseless. Just 12 people in Utah’s similar drug testing program came […] Read More