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In Monday's Daily Telegraph, the versatile Nick Allen, who is described as the UK paper's U.S. News Correspondent, covering "all things Hollywood," brings his considerable expertise to bear as he wades into the thicket of the American health care debate with this rare feat of reporting: "U.S. breast cancer drug decision 'marks start of death panels.'" (Please don't miss his scoop from yesterday: "Ailing Zsa Zsa Gabor returns home and refuses more surgery.")

While Allen's Gabor coverage is riveting ("She had a great run. She's 93. She knew five presidents, she knew kings and queens, celebrities..."), his health care coverage is truly terrible. And as journalism, plainly fraudulent. So, you know, blockbuster. Which is exactly how a right-wing river of lies — of "storylines" that can last for months, if not years — ripples from irresponsible reporters, to irresponsible arbiters of fake news like Matt Drudge and Andrew Breitbart, on down to us, the unwitting recipients of terror-ridden "trends" masquerading as blockbuster journalism.

The basis for the "death panels" piece is last month's FDA decision — by a vote of 12-1 — to no longer recommend the widely used cancer drug Avastin for use by late-stage breast cancer patients, because after further clinical trials, it has been determined that the drug (which was given provisional approval for the treatment of breast cancer in 2008 and is also prescribed for colon, kidney, lung, and brain cancer) is not effective for breast cancer patients. Got that? Not effective.

But you don't think that Nick Allen — please don't miss his coverage of Michael Jackson's funeral — is going to let that fact get in his way, do you? Because, as he writes in his investigation, "...it has been claimed that 'cost effectiveness' was the real reason ahead of reforms in which the government will extend health insurance to the poorest." Allen then goes on to quote no one in a knowledgeable position who has claimed this.

But wait. There's more. Allen then continues, by saying that "Avastin has been described as 'the poster child for expensive anti-cancer drugs,'" without saying who might have described it as such, or citing any such thing. And then he says that "during the [health care] debate, those opposed to the reforms cited Britain's National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which decides whether new treatments should be made available on the NHS on the basis of cost effectiveness, as an example of the sort of drug rationing that amounted to a 'death panel.'"

Now, do you see what he did there? Poor Nick Allen (Please don't miss his scoop from last Friday: "Paris Hilton vows to defend herself against hair extension lawsuit") ignored the real reason the FDA advisory panel made its decision on Avastin, set up a straw man position asserted by absolutely no one in his reporting, and then waded through the fetid marsh of his mind all the way to... death panels! Give the boy a gold star for dexterity. But sadly, he's still either a total dimwit or a very shoddy journalist, if you care to make those fine distinctions.

If you'll remember for a moment, the so-called "death panel" debate last summer was not over rationing of care, per se, because that assumes that there was some sort of rationality to the so-called debate. Rather, it was over a feature of end-of-life counseling that was once so uncontroversial — back during saner, smarter times — that it was championed equally by Republicans and Democrats. In fact, in 2007, an end-of-life bill was sponsored by well-known communist named Johnny Isakson, Republican senator of Georgia, who has called talk of euthanasia "nuts." Last year, though, after the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, coined the term and started scaring people that the president was going to euthanize the halt and the lame, death panels became perhaps the surest sign that that the truly stupid were having their day in the sun.

Oh, and a salient point as this idiot meme gathers strength (don't believe me? Just Google "Nick Allen" and "death panels" or look at this roundup and you will find that Nick Allen's little story is the patient zero of an epidemic): the hysteria Palin managed to create resulted in end-of-life counseling being stricken from the health care bill as passed earlier this year.

Anyway, back to Nick Allen, the Bob Woodward of death panels (please don't miss his other scoop from Monday: "Mel Gibson crashes his Maserati into a hillside"). Because he wasn't done making things up out of whole cloth. See the headline on the story? "U.S. breast cancer drug decision 'marks start of death panels'" Notice the words in quotes: marks start of death panels. Now, a reasonable person might safely assume that in the course of Nick Allen's quest for the truth some impeccable source had actually spoken those words to him. And that Nick Allen and his editors at the Daily Telegraph were just giving it to us straight, because that's what hard-nosed reporters and editors do. Well, reasonable person, you would be wrong. Read the story. Like much of the rest of the story, those words are spoken by no one. In brief, Nick Allen seems to have quoted himself, as no one other than Nick Allen himself asserts that this FDA advisory panel decision is a) in any way connected to the new health care law, or b) evidence that Barack Obama's new killing machine is now fully operational. (Speaking of death, do yourself a favor and don't miss Nick Allen's other scoop from Monday — holy crap, is he busy — "Michael Douglas having chemotherapy for throat tumour.")

But there must be something more that a journalist of Nick Allen's powers could do to make this fiction truly perfect, to really put the cherry on top.

That's right: The only thing a story like this could conceivably lack to make it unassailable to the right-wing Internet is the expert opinion of the family values senator from Louisiana, David Vitter, who also moonlights as the institution's leading whoremonger. (Note to Nick Allen's English readers, who might not be familiar: the meretricious Mr. Vitter is perhaps the most lightly regarded member of the U.S. Senate, who davens and preens as a moral exemplar, but has a well-demonstrated taste for strange and is currently being contested by a pornographic film star.) And, yes, Nick Allen has Senator Vitter expressing his grave moral concerns about the fairy story that Allen has found in the chambers of his own mind.

Unfair to say? Well, if Mr. Allen has any further substantiation for his incredible conclusions, this substantiation is nowhere in evidence in his piece. So he has given us no alternative but to decide that his piece, "U.S. breast cancer drug decision 'marks start of death panels'" is just a horrendous load of crap.

And the people who believe it are people who enjoy believing things that are demonstrably false.

(For the real story on the FDA and Avastin, please read this piece by Henry I. Miller, who was with the FDA from 1979 to 1994, and Jeff Stier, who is an associate director of the American Council on Science and Health.)

Alas, journalists for the right-wing press have eager audiences, whether they get anything right or not. This seems particularly true of the right-wing British press — from the Daily Telegraph to the Daily Mail, which makes up stories about movie stars and uses headlines like "The 'gay gene' is back on the scene." All of which is of no concern to aggregators like Drudge and Breitbart, who would have blank home pages but for the vivid imaginations of their brain-damaged Tory counterparts. Because, as even the worst liars in the American press claim to have the highest standards, the worst elements of the British press don't seem to bother with any such pretense. And these embarrassments to the profession don't really seem too fussed about being so bad at what they do, either, because they're actually really good at what they do.

You see, a journalist might feel bad about getting everything wrong. But like Drudge and Breitbart, these guys seem to exist only to feed the beast, work tirelessly (and effectively) to erode Barack Obama's approval ratings (or conversely, give a boost to a more conservative president), get Fox producers all hot and bothered, and leave the messes they make for actual journalists to clean up. Or not.

All that being said, please don't miss Nick Allen's other scoop from this week, "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo actress found."

Good luck with "all things Hollywood," Nick. And if we may be so presumptuous as to offer advice: Stick to what you know.

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