In my local paper today, Rebecca Ferrar profiles a local doctor who is helping the uninsured homeless in the area via her position as a County Health Department public health officer. The following quibble is not with the work of Dr. Buchanan, but with the choice of words Rebecca uses in the beginning of her article. Rebecca starts her article thusly:
Martha Buchanan has joys and troubles serving as the Knox County Health Department’s public health officer.
The joys come in helping patients with serious illnesses who have let their condition get so debilitating they are without a job and have become homeless.
Dr. Buchanan is then quoted:
“You work with getting their life under control,” Buchanan said. “It’s a Catch-22 for lots of folks if they can’t afford medicine and their case worsens and they lose their income and wind up on the streets. We try to reverse that.”
In other words these people did not LET their “conditions” get worse. They couldn’t AFFORD to have their “conditions” be treated (in the early stages) in the first damn place!
This is a HUGE difference, and one where the choice of words really matters.
