As many of you may know there is a major recall on cribs because of some deaths due to a possible defect. I assume it goes without saying that these deaths are horrible tragedies and I think we all feel the deepest sympathy for the parents who have lost children.
However when you read deeper into the story you find that in the last sixteen years there have been four deaths.
That’s right, four deaths in sixteen years or one every four years. This means that if one child a year is killed by an alligator that such a death is four times more likely. Obviously this does not take away from the tragic loss of those four children but it does put things into perspective.
Despite this I do think that if there is a real risk that there is a defect in these cribs that a recall is reasonable. Even one death is a death too many. If it means we need to ban a particular design because it is unsafe, that is worth exploring too. But we need to recognize that there is no such thing a perfect safety.
But when you look at the media hype on this story you would think children are dying by the carload. Last night NBC carried story in which they interviewed the parents of one of the victims and they spent considerable time showing pictures of this poor child and pulling at our hearts.
Even worse they they used a baby doll to show just HOW the child died, which is disgusting to me.
This to me sees a bit callous and taking advantage of the tragedy. Yes we do need to know about the problem and as I’ve said above the recall is fine if it is going to prevent death number 5. But there seems to be an implication that somehow there is a perfect crib out there and that if we just do it right nobody will ever get hurt.
Life is not perfect, bad things happen. This does not mean that we should not do what we can to prevent them, such as the recall. But it does mean that we can do without the media 1) hyping a death for ratings and 2) acting like we can stop all bad things from happening.