| One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist,
was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft.
Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent
press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. Thanks to Duncan Roads for this Quote. |
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"As a rough estimate, neurosurgeons do well to cure one in every
1,000-brain cancer patients they operate on. Radiation therapy slows
the growth of adult tumors, gaining perhaps one month of life, and may
result in a cure of only one in 500-1,000 patients. Similarly,
chemotherapy, despite 30 years of clinical trials, has not resulted in
the development of a single drug or drug combination that elicits more
than an occasional transient response in primary brain tumors."
--Dr. Robert Burdick, oncologist and professor at the University of Washington Medical School
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