It's repeated so often that it has long been regarded as a cliche, but we live in an increasingly information-intensive world, bombarded by facts and figures from an endless queue of media outlets, websites, television shows and Windsor-based science bloggers. This abundance of information often comes with a cost. If my grandfather wanted to learn something about his health - and of course like many men of his generation he didn't - he would have seen a doctor or read a reputable book. These days, we receive much of our information on the fly in bite-sized chunks from websites and media articles. Fast food culture applied to research.

The result is like trying to build an igloo by catching snowflakes. We snatch little snippets of information here and there, but often they lack any real substance, failing to really contribute to the building of a complete understanding of a subject. Stripped of context or reference, in the end these factlets are as intangible as the ether they travel through.

While the government haemhorrages US$5bn a day on health spending, infant mortality is on a par with Estonia, life expectancy barely reaches Western standards, and 1 in 7 adults don't have the education required to read an average newspaper article or instruction manual, and some states lag 30 years behind others. It has 5% of the world's population, but a staggering 24% of its prisoners. Welcome to the United States of America.

The report looks at a number of different measures of "human development", primarily health, education and income. Taking all factors together, the U.S.A. fell 10 places to 12th in the world, behind 11 nations all of whom have lower GDPs per capita.

Big Tobacco continues to use the framing approach in the kind of smooth, professional way that makes the rest of us look like over-enthusiastic school-kids. This time, they're fighting the F.D.A. by supporting the F.D.A. - genius.

Cuba is often cited as having one of the world's best health-care systems, with a life-expectancy level with the U.S. and a growth industry in health tourism in spite of years of tough trade sanctions limiting supplies. Complementary and Alternative medicine is commonly cited as one of the drivers of this impressive performance. But how much of this picture is real, and how much is myth? Do the millions of "alternative" pills being exported to other nations really work? And why are Big Pharm moving in?

Assessing Cuba's Health