Doctors are scientist so I was troubled when I saw a video clip of Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the NBC chief medical editor, discussing the recent study that rated the United States 41st in infant mortality rate - behind Cuba. It was, to say the least, very short on science.
A somber-faced Snyderman told the equally somber-faced NBC anchor Brian Williams that despite spending more per capita on health care than any other country in the world, our infant mortality rate is worse than that of Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Poland and even Cuba. Further, she reported than the US dropped from 29th place just five years ago. She went on to say that while some states like Washington, Iowa, and Vermont (which she pointed out has universal health care) are doing pretty well, other areas like DC, Maryland, Mississippi, Alabama and North Carolina are not. So the only metrics this scientist discusses are per capita health care spending and the infant mortality rate. Does she go on to explore other potential factors such as drug and alcohol abuse among pregnant women in the US, American women giving birth later and later in life (which is more risky), more multiple births with corresponding premature delivery and low birth weights as a result of infertility treatment? These are just a few that came to mind to this non-medical scientist. No, she just went on to talk about how we have "taken our eye off the ball" when it comes to newborn health and how intervention is so important. These are both very nice platitudes but hardly science. What she does do is imply that American medicine is bad because we spend too much money and based on this one particular measure, get poor results in return.
So if we "read between the lines" Snyderman believes: 1) All of America should be like Cuba or the state of Vermont and have universal health care; we would spend less money and be so much better off. and 2) The solution to poor performance of a private system is to convert it to a government run system. Using this type of analysis and logic, since we spend the second highest amount per capita of any country on education (behind Switzerland) and our public school students score at the bottom of the list of developed nations in math and science, the solution should be to privatize all primary and secondary education in the US. In neither case would I argue that per capita spending and any one particular outcome are sufficient to draw clear conclusions nor would I propose a 180 degree change of course as a solution.
Dr. Snyderman is a smart woman and she certainly knows that this situation is far more complex than she lets on from her report. This is junk news; junk science and purely political - not something worthy of the chief medical editor of a major news organization. With journalism like this, is it any wonder the public is watching less and less evening news and viewing other scientific news reports from the major media outlets on topics like man-made climate change with an increasingly jaundiced eye? I think our public understands science a bit better than the test scores would have you believe.
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