When I was in eleventh grade, my American history teacher was full of pithy sayings, one of which was, “Statistics don’t lie, but liars can use statistics.”

It’s true: Facts are facts. But based on the lens of the interpreter, facts can seem to support a fallacious argument. I’m paraphrasing, but I think in a Q&A segment Ayn Rand once mentioned that there appeared to be a correlation with the printing of the word “bread” (or some similarly irrelevant word) in New York Times headlines and deaths in India. So when you see correlation, it doesn’t necessarily imply causality. Similarly, statistics can be used to “support” altruism: “76% of Sudanese children go hungry! That means we have to feed them!” This argument ignores that the second statement does not follow from the first.

The Wall Street Journal presents, without comment, an “annual checkup” of how the US performs relative to other countries on various measures of health care. In the hands of altruists, this list of statistics could be dangerous. I’ll point out just a few of the bad arguments that an altruist might use this list of statistics to “support”:
The US has more MRI scanners per capita than any other nation in the analysis. An altruist who wants healthcare “reform” might argue that there are “too many” scanners, that doctors are inclined to prescribe “too many” expensive scans when more basic care would do, and that basic care could be given to more people. Well, when it’s your health that’s at stake, you would probably want to know what’s wrong — perhaps you’d want to know badly enough to pay for the extra scan, and it’s your right to do that, not your responsibility to provide health services to anybody else.Americans spend more money on pharmaceuticals than any other country does. This fact can be used as “evidence” that Big Pharma is evil, and that it needs to be subjected to price controls here as it is in other countries. In fact, drugs cost an enormous amount of money to develop — hundreds of millions of dollars each — and until we get rid of onerous regulatory agencies like the FDA and Europe’s EMEA, that cost has to be distributed among those who purchase them. But because socialized medicine in Europe has led to price controls, pharmaceutical companies accept lower rates there — rates that cover their marginal cost of producing a drug, but not the huge amount of overhead from developing it — and distribute the cost of the overhead in markets where there aren’t price controls (read: the US.) That’s why we pay so damn much for drugs. No, price controls will not solve the problem. They will merely ensure that no pharmaceutical company can stay in business, and you can kiss innovation goodbye.The US has the lowest percentage of tobacco smokers of any country surveyed. “Great!” altruists will say. “The campaign against Big Tobacco is working!” But everyone’s rights have been trampled in that effort — the right of tobacco makers to sell their products without interference from the government (not to mention their property rights, which are routinely violated any time lawmakers want to raise money by fining somebody), the right of smokers to light up wherever a property owner says they may, the right of restaurant and bar owners to allow smoking on their property, etc., etc., etc. And that is too high a price to pay.We’re the fattest country of the bunch, with more than a third of the population obese. I’ve already ranted and raved about how laws to prevent obesity are morally wrong, but that won’t stop a determined altruist from claiming that we all have to “sacrifice” a little to keep Americans healthier.

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