|
|
Post by Cranky on May 10, 2003 22:35:44 GMT -5
Here is a question.
Is a country or it’s leaders criminally liable for negligent homicide if they hide fatal diseases?
Case in point is the recent SARS outbreak. Chinese government knew about the fatality and infection rate and yet did not tell anyone, in fact it hid it from the world. Should countries be held to the same standard of the law as individuals? Should the new court in Brussels try Chinese officials for criminal negligence because the caused the death of people AROUND THE WORLD?
Remember, all these deaths were not caused by any acts of war. They were caused by people who intentionally withheld life and death information.
Two part question:
1. Are they criminally liable?
2. Is the so called “World Court” in Brussels going to take legal actions?
|
|
|
|
Post by Ranger Ranchod on May 11, 2003 17:15:02 GMT -5
Should companies face the same penalties as civilians when they cause death and disease due to improper disposal of materials known to be infected and inflammatory? One would think a company that gives the inhabitants of a nearby town cancer by willingly and knowingly polluting their water source should be faced with the same penalty as someone who runs around with a needle injecting HIV positive blood into their blood stream. But governments and corporations are far higher above the law than Joe Q. Doopledangler on the street.
I thought the world court was in The Hague?
|
|
|
|
Post by Cranky on May 11, 2003 18:35:40 GMT -5
Should companies face the same penalties as civilians when they cause death and disease due to improper disposal of materials known to be infected and inflammatory? One would think a company that gives the inhabitants of a nearby town cancer by willingly and knowingly polluting their water source should be faced with the same penalty as someone who runs around with a needle injecting HIV positive blood into their blood stream. But governments and corporations are far higher above the law than Joe Q. Doopledangler on the street. I thought the world court was in The Hague? You wont see any argument from my part. Any company that willfully contaminates or causes harm to people and hides it should be bakrupted and the company offcers arrested. |
|
|
|
Post by The New Guy on May 11, 2003 21:42:11 GMT -5
First off:
SARS is not as bad as the media makes it. For a communicable disease, it's really kind of lame. I'm mean, really, let's just compare it to other disease in the two really "badness" factors of a disease to the real badasses of the world.
First off - let's look at it's mortality rate. Two weeks ago it was estimated at six percent - which truthfully, was downright pathetic. Now the WHO and other offical people have upped it to 15%. Which makes it a bit meaner - but lets get real. AIDS - a truly scary disease has a mortality rate of 100%. Ebola has something like 98% mortality rate. The bubonic plague has a mortality rate of something near 90% (I believe).
SARS is a minor leaguer in the world of killers. Like its "media-loving" fellow disease - the West Nile Virus - SARS is pathetic when it comes to killing people.
So what, you retort. A disease doesn't have to be deadly. If it infects a bunch of people... well, 15% of a million people is still a lot right? Yes, but SARS isn't exactly highly communicable either. Highly communicable would be the Spanish flu, which infected 400-600 million (yes, million) in the 18 months of its outbreak - for the record that's about 22 million people a month. 22 million people. In its entire run since Febuary SARS has infected what... max 10,000 people (this is assuming China is hiding more than double the known cases). That's less than 0.1% of what the Spanish flu infected in a month.
SARS is a media-overblown joke. Does it kill people? Yes. Is it remotely worth the attention that it's getting world wide? Not a chance in hell. That's why when Toronto said "hey, we don't like the WHO issuing a travel advisory for our city" the WHO said "alright".
Secondly:
(a) Are they criminally liable? No. No more so than the person who goes into work with a cold and accidentally gives a co-worker the same cold, which leads to the coworker contracting pneumonia. While certainly China is responsible, they could easily argue "we didn't think it was that big a deal".
(b) Without (a) there can be no (b)
|
|
|
|
Post by Ranger Ranchod on May 11, 2003 23:29:19 GMT -5
Part of the fear of SARS is that you can catch it unknowingly without doing anything in particular. AIDS you can only get by sex or a transfusion. With SARS, you never know if you've breathed it in until it's too late.
But yeah, this SARS thing is totally overblown, with a doubt.
|
|
|
|
Post by The New Guy on May 12, 2003 1:01:08 GMT -5
Part of the fear of SARS is that you can catch it unknowingly without doing anything in particular. AIDS you can only get by sex or a transfusion. With SARS, you never know if you've breathed it in until it's too late. But yeah, this SARS thing is totally overblown, with a doubt. But see, that's the problem. You words are a prime example of how far out of proportion the media has blown SARS. You yourself acknowledge that SARS is overblown but you say: "part of the fear of SARS is that you can catch it unknowingly without doing anything". You can catch bacterial meningitis without doing anything. BM can kill you in eight hours from the onset of symptoms. Death rates range from 5% to 15% (even though BM is treatable). BM is preventable with a vaccination, but it still infects 3,000 Americans (hard to find Canadian numbers) every year. But I don't hear it mentioned in the news. I say again. Even thinking that SARS is scary is a mistake. It is not scary. All of Toronto turned out for a pair of baseball games last week. There's been no increased rate of virulancy. I don't think there's been a single new diagnosis. It hasn't spread from Toronto (except possibly to Norway) despite the fact that if you've ever driven on the 401 out of town at rush hour towards far away communities you know that there's a lot of people moving in and out of the city. A lot. SARS is not scary. It's just another disease. Not even a particularily deadly or virulent or painful one. |
|
|
|
Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 12, 2003 6:07:25 GMT -5
Disease is good. Ignore precautions.
|
|
|
|
Post by Cranky on May 12, 2003 8:37:47 GMT -5
That's it, TNG scared me so much with all these diseases that I am going to walk the world with a head to toe condom.........yes I will........
That's nothing. I was reading a few books about the Russian biological experiments (and probably American also). They now have strains of bubonic plague that is a virulent as the common cold and a "touch life" of 12 hours.
Wow, I'm impressed with mans ability to wipe ourselves out. Time to dig a hole in the ground........
The "negligence" part is that they knew that they had a problem and hid it. It's not hard to prove that because they admitted it. Criminal negligence is when someone causes injury or death through their actions.
A common cold is not the same. On the other hand, someone who has aids and has unprotected sex is also criminally negligent. There are “special interest” groups who will fight like mad dogs in order for people not to get charged with this.
Funny thing. In our society we have raised drunk driving to a huge “no-no” in our society and are willing to throw them in jail but we have not taken the same actions against people who knowingly and willingly transmit fatal diseases. Why?
|
|
|
|
Post by M. Beaux-Eaux on May 12, 2003 9:27:29 GMT -5
There is an unfortunate tendency in American society to guarantee an indiivdual's constitutional right to act stupidly, even if it obviously goes against public interest.
The rights of the private citizen and capital are sacrosanct and paramount over the collective, until conclusively and expensively proven otherwise.
I am of course waxing hyperbolic, but not overly so.
|
|
|
|
Post by The New Guy on May 12, 2003 11:07:51 GMT -5
That's it, TNG scared me so much with all these diseases that I am going to walk the world with a head to toe condom.........yes I will........ Nah - I've never contracted SARS or Ebola or the Spanish Flu or the Bubonic Plague or AIDS or the West Nile Virus or.... Fact of the matter is, they're all out there. But I'm not sick. Most people will probably never get these diseases (unless you make a habit of flying to AIDS stricken countries to pick up prostitutes or something, in which case your on your own) and they don't have to worry. But as long as I'm sowing fear throughout the HabsRUs world, Necrotizing Faciitis is another one that's more scary than SARS. Not because it's particularily deadly (20% mortality rate is better than SARS, but we're not talking insta-death here) or virulent (infects between 500 and 1500 Americans per year - which I think we'll find at the end of the year is more than the number of Americans infected with SARS this year, but again, is kinda wimpy) but because it eats away at your flesh. That's nothing. I was reading a few books about the Russian biological experiments (and probably American also). They now have strains of bubonic plague that is a virulent as the common cold and a "touch life" of 12 hours. Wow, I'm impressed with mans ability to wipe ourselves out. Time to dig a hole in the ground........ I'd be more inclined to believe those books to be more like fact overlaid with hooey to make it more frightening (no offence, I've read more than a couple of that type of books). The probability of Russia (or the US, or France, or Iraq, or Al Queda, or...) developing a super-deadly version of such nasties as the Plague or Ebola is not very likely. Consider how would it be tested without massive, massive risks of it escaping... The "negligence" part is that they knew that they had a problem and hid it. It's not hard to prove that because they admitted it. Criminal negligence is when someone causes injury or death through their actions. Again, I tend to agree that they hid it and knew that it was bad. But it's still an internal problem right? Jesus, there's a new China Flu every year - the fact of the matter is that SARS is an anomaly, and while China certainly did hide it, I don't think they're negligent in doing so. Remember, parts of this region of the world is quite honestly Disneyland for bacteria - people live in cramped quarters with little to no sanitation, animals intermingle with people, spitting is almost a national past time. China likely saw SARS as another flu and went to work trying to cure it to demonstrate the Chinese superiority. A common cold is not the same. On the other hand, someone who has aids and has unprotected sex is also criminally negligent. There are “special interest” groups who will fight like mad dogs in order for people not to get charged with this. SARS is nothing more than a super-deadly cold. Your comparison with AIDS is laughable at best, as there are only a couple of vectors that AIDS can be spread - blood transfusion in a country that doesn't look after its blood supply; having unprotected sex with an infected partner; letting an infected person bleed all over your own cuts. If you know you have AIDS and you have unprotected sex with someone, you are intentionally attempting to give someone AIDS or willfully ignorant of the risks (which, has a 100% death rate - which means it's virtually attempted murder). But if I had AIDS in the early 80's before anyone knew anything about it and I had sex with someone and gave them AIDS, am I guilty? Is SARS, which we honestly knew squat about before two weeks ago and still aren't quite sure about anything other than its genetic code any different? If we were talking about a massive outbreak of the plague or some other known quantity, you might have a case. You don't with SARS. Funny thing. In our society we have raised drunk driving to a huge “no-no” in our society and are willing to throw them in jail but we have not taken the same actions against people who knowingly and willingly transmit fatal diseases. Why? But it's so easy to say 'I didn't know'. When I was in Grade Six I gave the Chicken Pox to five other people in my class because I went to school with it. I didn't know I had it - my lymph nodes were swollen to all heck and I had a killer of a headache, but I wasn't covered in spots (I had been camping the weekend before and decided the pox that I did have were nothing more than flybites) and so I went on to school. Chicken Pox is fatal - am I guilty? I hope not... |
|
|
|
Post by Ranger Ranchod on May 13, 2003 13:40:00 GMT -5
But see, that's the problem. You words are a prime example of how far out of proportion the media has blown SARS. You yourself acknowledge that SARS is overblown but you say: "part of the fear of SARS is that you can catch it unknowingly without doing anything" How is merely stating facts the problem? The problem is not knowing how the disease is spread, it's the media's sensationalizing and overblowing it. It's not the fact that anyone can catch it that makes it overblown, it's the media's overblown paranoid-style coverage playing on people's fears that anyone can catch it that is. |
|
