Eat the Media Too

So tonight I am watching the news and they are talking about a recall for Johnson and Johnson products including some of the ones my kids take. So I listened up. As the story unfolded they showed footage of people from J&J before a bunch of really important looking Congress folks and laid out this scenario as though any second now J&J might be going under because of the flood of injured and dead children having taken their products.

Then the story said that no one had been killed.

No one had been injured.

No one had been sick.

There was a mention about a possible bacteria contamination in some products but no evidence that anyone had been sick from that either.

So I had to ask, "Why is this news?" While it is true that Tylenol and Motrin, like all NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) if taken for too long will contribute to kidney, liver problems and the like. I learned this when my mom died of kidney failure after a life time of chronic pain, but she took a very high dose of these drugs each and every day to manage her pain and have something resembling a normal life. So I am hard pressed to see the tragedy here.

Of course no one should give their child these medications like candy and certainly not above the recommended dosage, but I learned that by reading the label on the drugs before giving them to my children. Of course expecting people to actually read warning labels is a bit of an imposition on their rights, but hey since they haven't invented talking pill bottles yet I don';t really know what to do for that.

So why the big stink?

Well two reasons.

One, we live in a media culture and scandal sells really well to the viewing masses. Of course the hand wringing reporter on TV does not give a rip roaring snot about the children but they understand that if they wring their hands and make you care about the children then they will get better ratings, sell more advertising, and get to keep their jobs. Its a business in the news and therefore, although there may be nothing to report, corporate scandal is a big deal and the media will fabricate one out of thin air if they have to to keep us watching watching watching.

Two, we live in a litigious culture. We have all bought into the myth that if we can just get a sympathetic jury we can hit the lawsuit lottery and live happily ever after. We don't really trouble ourselves with whether or not this is right because after all, hey they got a lot of money and in the American Spirit of egalitarianism and free money for all, they should give some to me because they have more than me.

Don''t believe it?

Toyota anyone?

By this time Toyota has removed millions of acceleration modules from their vehicles to be inspected by their scientists as well as NHTSA's scientists and to date exactly not one part has been found defective. Not even in those vehicles which had acceleration accidents. In fact the evidence suggests that what actually happened was that these folks had their floor mats caught on the accelerator and panicked. It seems cold to say so, but human error is the much more likely explanation and the reason why is simple.

The general idea is that there is a software problem on these modules which causes the accidents. The problem with that is that if there were a software problem there would not have been about twenty incidents out of some four million vehicles, but rather four million incidents. The reason why is that the fly by wire system that Toyota uses controls the acceleration, not by how hard you push the pedal, but by how hard they computer thinks you pushed the pedal. If the software were defective, then the computer would misinterpret the data in each car in which said software was extant. However that has not been the case. In fact the extreme lack of commonness of these incidents indicates not that the trouble is hard to find in the software, but that a software problem does not exist.

But what about those poor suffering people who are left behind after the accidents?

Well what about them?

The simple fact that someone is hurting is not reason why that someone should receive a king's ransom from a company simply because that company had money. But to here the commercials soliciting people to come and sue Toyota on the radio you would never know it.

The point is that if you take too many nsaids and die it your fault. If you fail to put your floor mats back in correctly and die, its your fault. And if it is your fault, your existing folks left behind do not deserve money for your failure.

But the problem is that since we like corporate scandal and are conditioned to believe that corporations are evil we think it is OK to punish them whether they deserve it or not. And the problem with that is that when corporations do something which is grievous, we have a hard time determining that based on the many spectacular but frivolous stories being circulated by the media hoping for a sale.

Just thinking.