Folies d’Avocat
26th February 2010
USA Today continues its current marketing campaign to increase readership with rancid health stories. Today it is perils of hot dogs. But, no! Not for the usual reasons of sodium, meat, and mystery.
For shape.
Quoting CDC statistics, USA Today notes that 77 children die every year from choking on food with an expert estimate that 17% of those deaths are from hot dogs. That’s tough math to do with fingers AND toes, so let me get out the calculator, 77, then the multiplication X sign, and then, yeah, .17 and that =’s 13.09 deaths attributable to hot dogs.
All by design.
“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”
The Consumer Product Safety Commission requires labels on toys with small parts alerting people not to give them to kids under 3. Yet there are no required warnings on food, though more than half of non-fatal choking episodes involve food, Smith says.
“No parents can watch all of their kids 100% of the time,” Smith says. “The best way to protect kids is to design these risks out of existence.”
Though Smith says he doesn’t know exactly how someone would redesign a hot dog, he’s certain that some savvy inventor will find a way.
I appreciate Dr. Smith’s and all pediatricians work with children and I’m glad they do it. And, my heart goes out to parents and families who experience this tragedy.
But . . .
If we need to redesign hot dogs for 13.09 events, how shall we handle natural foods like bananas and grapes which share a shape similarity to hot dogs? Or do they get a pass here because they are natural? Perhaps, they kill fewer children, but isn’t one death one too many? If design kills, why should natural or artificial matter?
I’m just asking as the persuasion guy, you know, since I’m the one who has to handle the communication side of your idea because I’m sure that Dr. Smith doesn’t believe it goes from his lips to their ears then to their mouths. And people might wonder, if it is the design, then don’t we design everything? I mean, following Socrates and the humanists, isn’t Man the Measure of All Things? Designer Science. No Limits, except Imagination!
And, again with the Warning Labels. It’s a feature of a new Policy Statement that pediatricians are proposing. I didn’t realize that Med Schools taught courses in Warning Labels since you can’t swing the latest issue of a medical journal without hitting a medical expert calling for Yet Another Warning Label.
Hey, if you’re a Smart Consultant with a high tolerance for arrogant stupidity, there’s an exciting new career path for you as a Warning Label Consultant to Meds and Feds! Man, the charges you could make for all the “creative” work on label design – you’d make a lawyer at Boston Legal look like Mother Teresa.
And, then, at the end, the FDA and that new Policy Statement.
The Food and Drug Administration, which has authority to recall products it considers “unfit for food,” plans to review the new statement, spokeswoman Rita Chappelle says.
Might wanna run that by The Man.
All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.
If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.
It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.
Power Corrupts Persuasion . . .
. . . and on and on . . .