Scratch an anti-GMO activist, and you'll likely find a Marxist underneath

Slate's Will Saletan has a great article (published July 15) on his year-long investigation into the anti-GMO movement. He says this in his introduction (emphasis added):

The central premise of these laws—and the main source of consumer anxiety, which has sparked corporate interest in GMO-free food—is concern about health. Last year, in a survey by the Pew Research Center, 57 percent of Americans said it’s generally “unsafe to eat genetically modified foods.” Vermont says the primary purpose of its labeling law is to help people “avoid potential health risks of food produced from genetic engineering.” Chipotle notes that 300 scientists have “signed a statement rejecting the claim that there is a scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs for human consumption.” Until more studies are conducted, Chipotle says, “We believe it is prudent to take a cautious approach toward GMOs.”

The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all declared that there’s no good evidence GMOs are unsafe. Hundreds of studies back up that conclusion. But many of us don’t trust these assurances. We’re drawn to skeptics who say that there’s more to the story, that some studies have found risks associated with GMOs, and that Monsanto is covering it up.

I’ve spent much of the past year digging into the evidence. Here’s what I’ve learned. First, it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies. The people who tell you that Monsanto is hiding the truth are themselves hiding evidence that their own allegations about GMOs are false. They’re counting on you to feel overwhelmed by the science and to accept, as a gut presumption, their message of distrust.

Image source

Saletan's presentation is copiously documented, unlike most of the anti-GMO alarmism we encounter on Facebook and in other social media.

The science behind the anti-GMO movement has always been, and continues to be, fatally weak, but no matter: it SOUNDS plausible enough to scare the average consumer.  What motivates the most ardent anti-GMO activists is not a commitment to scientific truth, but rather a commitment to anticapitalism.

Because GMO food can be patented, evil corporations profit from its consumption.  No matter that genetic improvements to plant genomes can and do literally save lives, especially in the third world (through vitamin infusion and through integration of natural resistance to drought, pests, and disease, among other things) -- Marxist ideology trumps the lives and health of these people.

Government Health Nannies: "You keep making choices we don't like, so we'll do your choosing for you. You're welcome."

Image source

Obamacare sticker shock leads to heart attacks, many new patients for health care system

'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it'

This quote (from the article linked below), ladies and gentlemen, may go down in history as one of the iconic summaries of the political support the 'Affordable' Care Act enjoyed before anyone actually signed up for it and found out how much it would cost.

The risk pool has been forcibly expanded to include those who were formerly uninsurable due to the fact that they already had conditions guaranteeing that the insurance companies would take a loss on these customers from day one.

I'm not speaking against people who have trouble getting insurance; I'm merely asking: why is anybody surprised that insurance rates would go up when millions of high-risk customers were suddenly added to the risk pool?

Of course, not even Congress read the text of the Affordable Care Act before passing it, so why should we expect consumers to know picky little details like this?

Saturday's Los Angeles Times ran an article about California residents experiencing a rude awakening over the realities of losing their current coverage and being forced into plans that have significantly higher premiums.  Excerpts [emphasis added]:

Thousands of Californians are discovering what Obamacare will cost them — and many don't like what they see.

These middle-class consumers are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market. Their rates are rising in large part to help offset the higher costs of covering sicker, poorer people who have been shut out of the system for years.

Although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches and early enrollment snags, experts say sharp price increases for individual policies have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama's signature legislation.

"This is when the actual sticker shock comes into play for people," said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. "There are winners and losers under the Affordable Care Act."

If you're in one of the demographic categories that the ACA was designed to help, the law really appears to be a godsend.  But if you're not one of the favored ones, guess what?  You're basically being taxed to support the favored ones.

On balance, many Americans will benefit from the healthcare expansion. They are guaranteed coverage regardless of their medical history. And lower-income families will gain access to comprehensive coverage at little or no cost.

The federal government picks up much of the tab through an expansion of Medicaid and subsidies to people earning up to four times the federal poverty level. That's up to $46,000 for an individual or $94,000 for a family of four.

But middle-income consumers face an estimated 30% rate increase, on average, in California due to several factors tied to the healthcare law.

This is coming as quite a surprise to many who enthusiastically supported the law as long as it remained an abstract collection of promises.

Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said she received a recent letter from a young woman complaining about a 50% rate hike related to the healthcare law.

"She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said.

Obamacare really does seem designed to fail.  Whether or not the current form of the law was written with malicious intent, it is clearly not politically sustainable.  As the horror stories mount, the clamor for a government-run single-payer system will likely become deafening (especially with the media energetically amplifying said clamor).

[Image credit: various websites.  If you know the original source, please let me know!]

Obamacare: Just wait until it's the only choice

When a private company provides a mediocre product, customers can "punish" the company by denying it their business. Are we sure we want to entrust our lives and health to a bureaucracy that will pay no penalty for being wrong?

I ask because the Affordable Care Act in its current form is almost certainly not the end game of our current president and his fellow travelers. Once we get to single-payer health care in this country, we will have no alternative but to endure debacles like the online health insurance marketplace which, despite three years of work and half a billion dollars of investment, should not have gone live earlier this month.

Washington Post, October 21:

Days before the launch of President Obama’s online health ­insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.

Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead.

When the Web site went live Oct. 1, it locked up shortly after midnight as about 2,000 users attempted to complete the first step, according to two people familiar with the project.

As new details emerged about early warning signs of serious deficiencies in HealthCare.gov, Obama on Monday gave a consumer-friendly defense of the health-care law, insisting that the problems many Americans have faced in trying to enroll in insurance plans will be fixed quickly.

Great news: 50% think it’s wrong for Obama to force religious organizations to violate their conscience

Bad news: ONLY 50% think it’s wrong for Obama to force religious organizations to violate their conscience.  Rasmussen, February 8:

Half of voters do not agree with the Obama administration’s action forcing Catholic institutions to pay for birth control measures that they morally oppose. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the government should require a church or religious organization to provide contraceptives for women even if it violates their deeply held beliefs. Fifty percent (50%) disagree and oppose such a requirement that runs contrary to strong beliefs, while 10% more are undecided.

Does anybody think tests like this would NOT be used eventually for granting/denying services in ObamaCare?

UPI, May 13:

A blood test that measures the length of a person's telomeres -- a predictor of longevity -- may be available soon, U.S. and Spanish researchers say.

"Knowing whether our telomeres are a normal length or not for a given chronological age will give us an indication of our health status and of our physiological 'age' even before diseases appear," Maria A. Blasco, who heads the Telomeres and Telomerase Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and who co-founded the company Life Length, told Scientific American.

Further proof that ObamaCare is not about health care: New law effectively bans new physician-owned hospitals

Weekly Standard, January 3:

Under the headline, "Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals," Politico reports today that "Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might not seem like the best way to boost the economy or to promote greater access and choice in health care, but that exactly what Obamacare is doing.

Kenneth Artz of the Heartland Institute explains, "Section 6001 of the health care law effectively bans new physician-owned hospitals (POHs) from starting up, and it keeps existing ones from expanding." Politico adds, "Friday [New Year's Eve] marked the last day physician-owned hospitals could get Medicare certification covering their new or expanded hospitals, one of the latest provisions of the reform law to go into effect."

MSM starting to report on the “unintended consequences” of Obamacare

“Unintended consequences” – a phrase almost certain to become clichéd in the coming months and years as people and businesses start digging into (and reacting to) the deepest, darkest parts of the new health care law.

AP reports July 23 that the law is already starting to have a negative impact on one class of people:

Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise.

[…] Starting later this year, the health care overhaul law requires insurers to accept children regardless of medical problems — a major early benefit of the complex legislation. Insurers are worried that parents will wait until kids get sick to sign them up, saddling the companies with unpredictable costs.

[…] "Our plans are very concerned about this," said Alissa Fox, a top Washington lobbyist for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. "If the law says that insurers have to take you any time, any place, some people will see that as an opportunity to wait until their children get sick to buy coverage."

There is nothing in the law that would stop a hospital from buying a policy for a uninsured child who came into the emergency room, she added.

The law is almost certainly riddled with landmines like this.  The average congressperson can neither confirm nor deny this, primarily because the average congressperson hasn’t actually read the law he or she voted to enact.

Way to court the conservative base, Mitt

Mitt Romney’s opposition to ObamaCare appears to be based on technical objections – in other words, Romney thinks he would have done a better job of expanding his Mass-Care miracle to the national level.  NY Times, April 9:

The Democratic National Committee has posted a video compilation of Mr. Romney’s comments praising the Massachusetts health insurance mandate. Twice last week, Mr. Obama pointedly observed that Mr. Romney seemed to be lambasting a federal plan that was derivative of his own Massachusetts model.

“I keep on scratching my head,” Mr. Obama said at a fund-raising reception in Boston. “I say, ‘Boy, this Massachusetts thing, who designed that?’ ”

In response, Mr. Romney is reminding audiences that Mr. Obama has cast the Republicans as the “party of no,” devoid of ideas. “And yet,” Mr. Romney said in Bedford, “he’s saying that I was the guy that came up with the idea for what he did. He can’t have it both ways.”

He added, “If ever again somewhere down the road I would be debating him, I would be happy to take credit for his accomplishment.”

Yes, he’s bragging about the fact that ObamaCare got its inspiration from Romney’s Mass-Care, which some insist will end up bankrupting the state of Massachusetts.

Remember, Mitt: the GOP’s conservative base dominates the primary voting.  If you want to trick enough of them into thinking you’re a conservative, you need to stop showing your true colors.

(Source: Creators)

Via: Rich Lowry, NRO

Is the GOP already losing its will to fight ObamaCare?

Jeffrey Anderson at National Review Online (emphasis added):

Less than three days after the passage of Obamacare, many Republicans are already losing their stomach for the fight. As Ezra Klein gleefully — but aptly — observes over at the Washington Post, “In about 12 hours, the GOP's position has gone from ‘repeal this socialist monstrosity that will destroy our final freedoms’ to ‘there are some things we don't like about this legislation and would like to repeal, and there are some things we support and would like to keep.’ . . . At this rate, they'll be running on expanding the bill come November.”

Sen. Jon Kyl said, “I would guess probably more realistically would be a potential repeal of pieces of the bill.” It lights the fire in the belly, doesn’t it? Sens. Mike Enzi and John Cornyn followed suit.

On MSNBC, Rudy Giuliani, said, “You just laid out how the Republicans should run the campaign, when we get a month, two months out of this — not repeal health care.” With all due respect to Mayor Giuliani, this is the sort of thinking that led to his Florida Strategy.

Sometimes, one has to wonder at Republicans’ tin ear. If they were writing Patrick Henry’s famous 1775 address, would they have advised, “Well, full liberty might be a bit much to ask for. And I’m not sure if we really want death. How about, 'Give me a little more liberty, or make me ill'?”

“Repeal, and then real reform” — that’s the right message, and the one that reflects the American people’s views. “Partial repeal” actually legitimizes Obamacare and helps to sell it by suggesting that the GOP doesn’t really think it’s all that bad.

You can read the WaPo article here.

Be sure to vote in our C-Poll some time in the next 7 days!

C-Poll: Have the Republicans grown a spine, and for the right reason?

A new poll has been posted at the top of the page:

The united House Republican stand against the just-passed health care 'reform' bill can best be attributed to…

If you wish to comment, feel free to do so here.

UPDATE:  Is the GOP already losing its will to fight ObamaCare?

UPDATE, April 2: Here are the poll results (click for larger image):

Unsurprisingly, constitutional concerns (i.e. “A newfound respect for the constitutional limits on federal power”) did not score well, although an amazing 10% thought that the bulk of the GOP congressfolks were thus motivated.  Sorry, dear reader, but that’s crazy talk.

The winner at 37% was the second choice: “A sense that the changes this law would bring about would be bad for our country.”  Well, okay, this happened to coincide with the constitutionally correct vote, but it won’t always.

Political calculation came in second, as embodied in the fourth and ninth choices (combining for 35%): “Unalloyed political opportunism” and “Two words: Election Year”.

For the record, I inclined toward one of the political calculation choices, given that many of the same folks expressing outrage at Obamacare voted for the Medicare prescription drug entitlement a few years ago.

Big Nanny stands ready to criticize your food choices

AP (via Yahoo) reports on one of the mandates buried in the health care “reform” signed today by the president:

A requirement tucked into the massive U.S health care bill will make calorie counts impossible for thousands of restaurants to hide and difficult for consumers to ignore. More than 200,000 fast food and other chain restaurants will have to include calorie counts on menus, menu boards and even drive-throughs.
The new law, which applies to any restaurant with 20 or more locations, directs the Food and Drug Administration to create a new national standard for menu labeling, superseding a growing number of state and city laws. President Barack Obama signed the health care legislation Tuesday.
The idea is to make sure that customers process the calorie information as they are ordering. Many restaurants currently post nutritional information in a hallway, on a hamburger wrapper or on their Web site. The new law will make calories immediately available for most items.
"The nutrition information is right on the menu or menu board next to the name of the menu item, rather than in a pamphlet or in tiny print on a poster, so that consumers can see it when they are making ordering decisions," says Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who wrote the provision.

“The idea is to make sure that customers process the calorie information as they are ordering.” But what if, despite the new labeling, the customer still ignores the calorie information?  The administration (led by Gen. Michelle Obama) has declared war on obesity, so I can’t imagine it standing by idly as customers continue to order the foods they like.
So, what’s the next phase of the campaign?  How about “informed consent”?  Customers will not receive their food until they sign a form affirming that they are aware of the calorie impact of their meal.

But what if customers STILL won’t make good food choices? Is it really outlandish to predict that the government will eventually start regulating the maximum calorie content of restaurant meals?
One last thought: as the above excerpt shows, only restaurant chains with 20 or more locations are subject to the labeling requirements. This means that obese people can continue to patronize local non-chain restaurants in blissful (and deadly, if you believe the nannies) ignorance, regardless of the gastronomical atrocities on said restaurants’ menus.
This is an implicit acknowledgment of the fact that compliance with these regulations is awfully expensive.  But, if we accept the notion of the federal government as our food-choice nanny, we cannot protest when the regulations are eventually made universal, even at the expense of the financial stability of our favorite local eatery.  As Hillary Clinton famously said in 1994 regarding the financial impact of the Clinton administration’s attempt to nationalize the health care industry: “I can't be responsible for every undercapitalized small business in America.”

Quick Quote: Frédéric Bastiat on wealth redistribution

There’s an abundance of data supporting this from the experience of Communist societies, but certain western academics and politicians remain convinced that the problem resides in the execution of the philosophy, not in the philosophy itself.

If it were to be asserted on principle, admitted in practice, sanctioned by law, that every man has a right to the property of another, the gift would have no merit—charity and gratitude would be no longer virtues. Besides, such a doctrine would suddenly and universally arrest labor and production, as severe cold congeals water and suspends animation; for who would work if there was no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants?

-- Frédéric Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy

Feel free to draw your own applications to the financially destructive, liberty-smothering health care boondoggle that just passed.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Abortion is “preventative care”.

Life News, today:

Yesterday, the Senate began the process of considering amendments to Senator Harry Reid's pro-abortion health care legislation.

The first amendment offered was Mikulski Amendment No. 2791, sponsored by pro-abortion Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, dealing with federally mandated coverage of "preventive care."

The amendment would essentially define abortion as preventative care and could result in mandates to private insurance plans that they define abortion as such and provide coverage of it.

Because of that, the National Right to Life Committee issued a letter to members of the Senate urging them to strongly oppose the Mikulski amendment.

"If Congress were to grant any Executive Branch entity sweeping authority to define services that private health plans must cover, merely by declaring a given service to constitute 'preventive care' then that authority could be employed in the future to require all health plans to cover abortions," NRLC explains.

"Therefore, NRLC opposes both the Mikulski Amendment No.2791, and the underlying language of Section 1001, unless additional language is added to explicitly exclude abortion from the universe of services that might be mandated as 'preventive care,'" the letter continues.

Dems in Congress have no clue about the constitutional basis of their power

A reporter for CNSNews has been asking prominent congressional Democrats: Where does the Constitution authorize Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance? 
All of the proposed health care “reform” bills have this mandate, so obviously the majority think they have the power to  make the purchase of a product a “condition of lawful residence in the United States” (in the words of the Congressional Budget Office, which notes that such a move by Congress is unprecedented).
Of course, no such power is granted to Congress, but you wouldn’t know it asking congressional leaders.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer thinks that the health care mandate is no different from a general tax law:

Hoyer, speaking to reporters at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday, was asked by CNSNews.com where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to mandate that a person must by a health insurance policy. Hoyer said that, in providing for the general welfare, Congress had “broad authority.”
“Well, in promoting the general welfare the Constitution obviously gives broad authority to Congress to effect that end,” Hoyer said. “The end that we’re trying to effect is to make health care affordable, so I think clearly this is within our constitutional responsibility.”
Hoyer compared a health insurance mandate to the government’s power to levy taxes, saying “we mandate other things as well, like paying taxes.”
The section of the Constitution Hoyer was referring to, Article I, Section 8, outlines the powers of Congress, including raising taxes, but not the purchasing any type of product or service. The opening paragraph of Section 8 grants Congress the power to raise taxes to, among other things, “provide for the … general welfare of the United States.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy simply asserts the authority:

CNSNews.com: "Where, in your opinion, does the Constitution give specific authority for Congress to give an individual mandate for health insurance?"
Sen. Leahy: "We have plenty of authority. Are you saying there is no authority?"
CNSNews.com: "I’m asking—"
Sen. Leahy: "Why would you say there is no authority? I mean, there’s no question there’s authority. Nobody questions that."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is flabbergasted that anybody would question Congress’ power to legislate as it pleases:

CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”
Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”
Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated [sic] that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a "serious question."
“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”

The question obviously caught Pelosi by surprise, and her answer amounted to “Who let this guy in here?” Later, her staff gathered its wits and fell back on Congress’ old friend, the omnipotent ‘Interstate Commerce Clause’:

Pelosi's press secretary later responded to written follow-up questions from CNSNews.com by emailing CNSNews.com a press release on the “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform,” that argues that Congress derives the authority to mandate that people purchase health insurance from its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

Okay, I’m convinced.  How about you?

White House “Reality Check” website fails reality check

CNSNews, August 11:

A new Web site launched Monday by the Obama administration to rebut alleged disinformation about the administration's efforts to reform the health care system claims that reform “would not add one penny to the deficit"--despite the fact that the two health care reform bills that have been analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office are predicted by the CBO to increase the national debt by $239 billion and $1.042 trillion respectively.

The administration, meanwhile, has not produced any health-care reform legislation that has been independently determined to be deficit-neutral.

Government-run health care, v 1.0

Here’s the version the Democrats in the House of Representatives passed, as interpreted by the Republican staff on the Joint Economic Committee.

I call it version 1.0, because this version still includes private insurers.  Later versions may do away with that component.

Click image to enlarge (or click the link above to view the original, which is even larger), not that it will aid comprehension very much.

Mark Steyn: Environmentalism and health care are perfect instruments of despotic rule

Excerpt from a July 11 Mark Steyn essay (emphasis added):

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you from getting ill in the first place — by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning. Likewise, if everything you do impacts “the environment,” then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe’s new book rightly identifies as “soft despotism.”

Another reason why Mitt Romney should not be allowed anywhere near the 2012 GOP nomination

I’m not sure who Mitt Romney is trying to impress.  The man behind Massachusetts’ coercive state-run universal health care system is proud of his creation, and he thinks you should be forced to join it too.

WCBV (Boston), July 9:

Three years after the inception of Massachusetts’ landmark health reform legislation, which required every citizen to buy insurance, NewsCenter 5’s Ed Harding wondered what former Gov. Mitt Romney, a key political architect of the plan, thought of its progress.

Call it protecting his legacy, well-earned pride, or seeing the glass as half-full, but Romney says Massachusetts deserves an ‘A.’

“It’s working like we had hoped it would work,” the one-time republic presidential candidate said. “We got nearly everybody in Massachusetts health insurance, which really, something people didn't think was possible.”

Romney said the same can be done nationwide, though he concedes what many in the Bay State are grappling with now, that the hardest part of the reform debate is controlling costs.

[…]

Romney points to a recent analysis by the pro-reform Massachusetts Taxpayers’ Association, showing that since near-universal coverage was implemented in 2006, state taxpayers have had to shell out an additional $88 million per year to insure an additional 430,000 citizens.

“Some people say. ‘Oh, it's expensive,’ but actually, it cost less than two percent of the state budget.”

So, something that shouldn’t be government’s responsibility in the first place is okay because it costs no more than 2% of the annual budget.  Oh. Well.  What was I complaining about?

Romney appears to have only one substantial objection to Obama’s national healthcare vision.  As I mentioned before, Romney is all for coercing people into getting health insurance, but he doesn’t see any need for a public plan option. 

It also appears that he’s okay with putting productive Americans on the hook for tens of billions of dollars (up to 2% of the federal budget) to cover premiums for those who can’t afford them.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

Anybody who is acceptable to the majority of Massachusetts voters cannot possibly be good for America. 

As far as Democrats are concerned, how sweet it is to have a prominent Republican who eagerly champions a significant part of their agenda.

This is almost certainly why Romney has already been declared  the 2012 GOP nominee by the media.

When government controls your healthcare

Is this America, ten years after the imposition of ObamaCare? UK Daily Mail, July 6:

An active pensioner admitted to hospital for routine treatment for a stomach bug died six weeks later following a series of 'blunders' by overworked staff.
Betty Dunn, 79, was taken to Tameside General Hospital in Ashton-under-Lyme, Greater Manchester, to be rehydrated with saline.
But her horrified family watched helplessly as the widow's condition deteriorated over six weeks before she died after contracting the superbug C-diff.
At one point her relatives, who battled to communicate with staff who apparently didn't speak English, were so concerned for the former Land Girl's welfare they called in police.
Doctors then transferred the great-grandmother to another hospital for 'rehabilitation'.
But when Mrs Dunn was unable to sit up she was sent straight back to Tameside. She died three days later.
Mrs Dunn's family, who call the hospital a 'zoo', compiled a log of her treatment and claim that a catalogue of errors made by staff included:

• Giving her penicillin when she was allergic to the drug
• Mistakenly denying her antibiotics
• Failing to advise relatives to wear protective gloves or aprons to guard against superbugs
• Giving her a designated food substitute three times a day - against the advice of doctors
• Breaking the news of her increasingly grave condition to relatives in a busy corridor in front of other visitors.

(Image found here)