Prostate
and politics

Along with One and Two World Trade Center, there’s a third collapsed tower Rudy Giuliani has invoked in his run at the Republican leadership: the one in his pants. In a new radio ad, Rudy dredges up his battle against prostate cancer as a jab against a universal health care system. But the facts he puts forth are somewhat less than factual.

The ad features Rudy claiming an 82 per cent survival rate for the prostate cancerous in the U.S. In England, he says, the rate is a scant 44 per cent. He then blames “socialized medicine” for the variance.

Completely ignoring the fact that he was actually on a federally funded health care plan when diagnosed, Giuliani takes his 44 per cent figure from a seven-year-old right-wing journal authored by one of his own policy advisors, Dr. David Gratzer.

Gratzer admits the number was reached through a “crude” interpretation of research done by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit health policy group that completely dismissed Gratzer’s conclusions, and pointed out that even their original research was outdated.

Rudy isn’t letting any of this put him off his game plan. Asked if Team Rudy would continue making the debunked claims, a Giuliani spokesperson responded, “Yes. We will.”

by Scott Saxon