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Outside Outrage

We're not the only ones who are outraged - here are some outside outrages that caught our eye!

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Spitzer Commentary Worse than the Scandal Print E-mail
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Cultural Outrage
Written by Tiffany Sanders   
Tuesday, 25 March 2008 00:21

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after it came to light that he'd been partaking of some very expensive local prostitutes, but the reaction and the commentary that followed that revelation was at least as disturbing as the incident itself. The prostitute in question became an overnight celebrity with more than five million hits on her web page. Discussion forums across the country buzzed with debate about whether or not Spitzer's wife should be standing by him. And, as if that weren't all enough, "experts" like Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Erica Jong appeared on camera to share their opinions with us.

The content of their statements was bad enough: Dr. Laura told us that men were bound to be susceptible to the charms of other women if their wives didn't attend to their personal and sexual needs and make them feel like men, successes and heroes. And Erica Jong followed that up by diagnosing Spitzer as a sex addict.

Dr. Laura’s statement surprised me a bit, given her reputation for insisting on fidelity and personal responsibility. Turns out those poor men just can't be expected to stay faithful if their women aren't acting right at home. Does that apply to Eliot Spitzer? Did his wife fail to make him feel like a man, leaving him vulnerable to the "charms" of another woman? I don't know. Neither does Dr. Laura, despite the prestige of her doctorate in…um…Physiology. Nor, of course, can Erica Jong possibly know whether Eliot Spitzer is a sex addict based on what's been revealed in news reports.

It would be professionally questionable for a mental health professional to reach such a conclusion (and announce it) without any firsthand knowledge or professional records on which to base her conclusion. Fortunately, Erica Jong is off the hook because she's…well…a novelist. She wrote a famous novel about sex, which apparently qualified her in the minds of a certain television station to speak on the larger meaning of Spitzer's actions.

Unfortunately, Jong's famous novel isn't as famous as it once was. What was controversial and widely reported in the seventies has become fairly standard fare today, and the world is full of people who have never heard of Erica Jong. I happened to watch her pronouncement on an airport television with several of those people, and what I witnessed was troubling: because she announced a diagnosis, they assumed that she was a psychologist or some other kind of mental health professional.

Of course, people are free (within legal bounds) to say any fool thing they want to. But wouldn't it be nice if they just…didn't? Wouldn't it be nice if people didn't make declarative statements about things they didn't really know much about, and if television stations and magazines and other media didn't hold people out as experts who just…weren't?
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Supreme Court Leaves Patients Vulnerable to Medical Device Defects Print E-mail
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Legal Outrage
Written by Tiffany Sanders   
Monday, 24 March 2008 23:26

Earlier this month, the United States Supreme Court ruled that federal law pre-empted state lawsuits based on negligent design or manufacture of medical devices that had received pre-market approval from the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

In theory, pre-emption makes sense. The Medical Device Amendments specify that states can’t add requirements; it’s easy to see the kind of complications that would ensue if each state had different—and possibly conflict--requirements for medical device approval. But in determining that allowing state courts to apply common-law negligence standards would amount to “additional requirements”, the Supreme Court has effectively declared that a medical device manufacturer that secures pre-market approval is in the clear.

Even that, on the surface, might seem logical. After all, the device has already gone through rigorous screening, right? Can’t we assume that it wasn’t negligently designed if the FDA thoroughly reviewed and approved it?

Perhaps, if the FDA conducted its own tests or used outside experts to approve medical devices, there might be some reason to that perspective. In fact, however, the pre-market approval process is based on data submitted by the manufacturer itself, based on its own testing.

So, in essence, the manufacturer says, “We tested it out and it works great. No problems.” The FDA reviews all of the reports that say “we tested it out and it works great” in more detail, and then grants approval. And then, if it turns out that the device DOESN’T actually work great…that, perhaps, it kills people…those people (and their heirs) are barred from filing lawsuits against the manufacturer because it would be “imposing additional requirements” for the state court to say that medical devices should be manufactured in such a way as to not kill people.

Think the FDA has a handle on that in the pre-market approval process? Here are just a few of the drugs and devices that have received FDA approval in recent years and gone on to be recalled and/or formed the basis for nationwide lawsuits:

Vioxx
Seroquel
Risperdal
Baycol
Ortho-Evra
Viagra
Cialis
Certain Cordis Balloon Catheters
Certain Guidant Defibrillators
Certain Medtronic Implantable Infusion Pumps

Somehow, it doesn’t look like that pre-market approval is a sure thing. Just maybe, some “additional requirements” (try not to kill the patient) would be helpful. As it stands, medical device manufacturers have little at risk if their devices fail.

While it might be nice to believe that these corporations will want to avoid killing their customers out of the goodness of their hearts, or concern for public relations, or just because doctors might stop using their devices if they don’t work out, the recent history of drug litigation tells us that isn’t the case at all. Well-documented information in recent trials has made it clear that major corporations are making conscious decisions to sacrifice certain numbers of consumers in the interest of higher profits—civil litigation that might have cut into those profits might have been the last protection standing for patients reliant on their products.
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Page 8 of 11

One Minute Outrage - Political

Issue: We pay lip service to setting aside international differences and coming together in the spirit of healthy competition, good fun, and the common ground that makes us all human--but the way it plays out looks a lot like all of the other international power plays in the world.

Impact: Stronger, richer countries use the Olympics as one more means of demonstrating their superiority and lording it over the rest of the world and we all get wrapped up in the spirit of pride in "our team"--or the sinking feeling of knowing that our team isn't up to par--extending international tensions into yet another arena rather than bridging the gaps.

Read More: Promoting World Peace by Counting Everybody's Gold

 

One Minute Outrage - Earthly

Issue: A blind couple is prosecuted for employing a commonly accepted method of composting in their own garden.



Impact: Your tax dollars at work making life difficult for people with the audacity to grow vegetables--and an apparent legal preference for chemical fertilizers over organic matter that might actually help the environment.



Read More: Gardener Threatens Public Safety with Compost

One Minute Outrage - Legal

Issue: Police departments in major cities across the country aren't content to arrest self-made criminals, but have decided to hit the streets and see whether they can create some more.



Impact: Time and tax dollars poured into sting operations designed to test ordinary people and create crimes that would never have been; meanwhile, who's minding the store?  Hundreds of thousands of unserved felony warrants lie inactive across the country while police experiment in subways, department stores and on streetcorners.

Read More:  Make Your Own Criminal – It's So Much Easier than Chasing the Real Ones

 

One Minute Outrage - Cultural

Issue: Righteous indignance and the spirit of protest sweep us away for the pettiest of reasons; hundreds of thousands of complaints pour in and a dozen attorneys work for more than four years to hash out the consequences of a half-second view of a pop star's breast.

Impact: We use up our time, energy, and money on the easy battles while the ones that could change the world languish, unfought, because they weren't as spicy or as simplistic and they required that we do more than pick up the phone or dash off an email.

Read More: Janet Jackson’s Breast Eclipses World Issues

Is Clarity a Curse in 2008?

 From the author of Globally Rational

2008 presidential election

Barack Obama has been criticized for being “too vague” and not providing enough details about his plans for change in America. But are we ready to listen to the details? In a culture of buzz words, sound bites, and cheap plays for emotional reactions, would a candidate who tried to tell us what he planned to do and why stand a chance—or would we tune out the details and flock back to someone who was willing to boil it down to a catchy slogan and pretend that there were easy answers?



Read More: Election 2008 - Buzzwords and Blurred Issues

 

 

 

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