Read the passage below It is a fictitious editorial piece th

Read the passage below. It is a fictitious editorial piece that could have been published in a popular online news source. Then answer the questions below:
Evaluating Claims for Truth, Bias, Error, or Falsity
1. What is the claim? Evaluate the claim. Is it true or a claim without reason?
2. Is the author an expert or an authority? Why or why not?
3. Is the source of the claim credible? Why or why not?
4. How credible is the evidence used to support the claim?

Your response should be one-two pages in length

The Money is in the Medicine, Not the Cure
By Jerry Spencer, Esq. (Fictitious author)

I must first disclose that I don’t practice medicine nor do I work in the healthcare finance field. Yet there is enough information out there to plainly see that health care companies don’t want you to be cured. They want to keep you hooked on their medicine. They are the modern day drug dealers who hide behind fancy degrees and white coats…but they can reveal who their supplier is, and his name is Big Pharma.

There are more deaths due to prescription pain killer overdoses annually than heroin and cocaine combined. Why doesn’t the government declare a War on Opiates? Simple…there are 15 pharmaceutical lobbyists for every one person on Capitol Hill. The Pharmaceutical Industry has been the most profitable industry in the history of the world.

Pain clinics in Florida commonly prescribe 200 Oxycontin pills based solely upon the patient paying 300 dollars and saying that they are in pain. In fact, 80 percent of the painkillers in the country originate from Florida. Why doesn’t the Sunshine State enforce regulation? As the Wu-Tang Clan stated, “Cash rules everything around me, CREAM get the money, dolla dolla bill ya’ll.” The money is in keeping addicts hooked on painkillers and not in the needed regulation that could easily bring the national abuse epidemic to a quick halt.

I was in the military and worked as an Intelligence Officer. I often worked with various government branches. One time, while working a joint operation with the CIA, one of their officers confided in me that the government has a cure for cancer, yet will not let it out because it would take away too many jobs and be too costly for Big Pharma. This is a classified secret and I could be killed just writing about it. Think about it: If there was a cure for cancer, all of the oncology centers, research universities, oncologists, and drugs to treat cancer would no longer be needed. Big Pharma is so profitable that they won’t release a known cure because they put profits before people.

In the end, the government wants us to get hooked on drugs, spend all of our income at the pharmacy, and then we are only allowed to die in a bed if we have the expensive new government-mandated health insurance. They give us the leftovers and keep the truth to themselves. Remember-never ask a barber if you need a haircut, a psychologist if you have a mental disorder, or the doctor if a pill is bad for you.

Solution

Answer:

1. What is the claim? Evaluate the claim. Is it true or a claim without reason?

Answer: The claim here is that the government in conjunction with the pharmaceutical company BigPharma are taking health as a business and for this reason they hasn’t revealed the cure for cancer although this is already discovered. In my opinion as a critical thinker this claim is not veridical because it hasn’t any evidential support, and it’s just a claim without reason because it’sthe word of this author against everything that we already know and accept as a reality in this society.

2. Is the author an expert or an authority? Why or why not?

Answer: This author isn’t an expert nor an authority because he isn’t a doctor and hasn’t worked in thisfield, even though he says that he worked in the Military as an Intelligence Officer, I as a critical thinker with certain sense of skepticism, must say that I can’t accept that claim because this author didn’t present any evidence of it and I don’t even know how much was his experience as an Intelligence Officer.

3. Is the source of the claim credible? Why or why not?

Answer: The source of this claim isn’t credible because he portrays only one side of the issue, therefore this author says that he has exclusive access to classified information, this would be very difficult to verify

4. How credible is the evidence used to support the claim?

Answer: This author just didn’t present any evidence to support his claim, and I as a critical thinker have no way to access the “classified” information that the author says he has, so it is very difficult to check the veracity of this writing being not presented any evidence.