E Coli outbreak in Germany - crime and punishment

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brussle sprouts? i have never eatten them raw, to bitter. I saute them in butter, salt, pepper and a little lemon juice

 

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BS BS BS

If you were old enough to consider slicing your wrists you knew fully well that smoking was both addicting and dangerous before you lit up.

In the US, UK and Australia cigarettes can not be legally sold to anyone under 18.

So YES, unless someone physically forced you to light up, smoking was a FREE CHOICE that you made.

I'm just as sick and tired of people who excercised free choice to start smoking blaming their subsequent addiction on everything but themselves.

Arthur

 

Not every adult wants the GOVT. to be their mommy.

Pretty sure that anyone smoking these days and really since many decades ago knows full well the dangers of smoking. They do it regardless of alllll the information that it is bad for you. Just like drugs...Doesnt everyone know doing hard drugs will leave you addicted, broke (spend all your money), sick, dead, you friends leave you..etc.?

 

Cookies and hugs wasn't an option (it's becoming a rather tedious strawman), and we haven't established whether it's feasible to have both. This isn't a trap, Bells, I just want to know how whether our disagreement is deep in our values.

Would you rather punish the dodgy practitioners who get caught, or adjust the system so that dodgy practices have less chance to flourish?
If you had to choose one or the other, which would you choose?

Of course. And 'action' doesn't have to be 'punishment'.

I must have missed it.
You have argued that personal responsibility must be forced upon people by punishment,
Why? What benefit is gained from punishing someone who refuses to take personal responsibility?

Bells, the argument is about punishment after an incident, not about responsibility for actions in general.
Yes, people should take responsibility for their actions.
Yes, people should be held responsible for their actions.

But:
- Actions are distinct from consequences.
- Holding someone responsible for their actions is not the same as imposing punishment, just as taking responsibility doesn't mean punishing yourself.
- In the aftermath of a serious incident, holding people responsible is less important than discovering causes.

See the links I posted a couple of posts back.

Again, 'turning a blind eye' would be stupid and counterproductive.
Can you really not see that punishment is not the only response?
Yes, obviously action has to be taken, and obviously unsafe behaviour needs to be discouraged.
But punishing only the tiny few cases that result in serious incidents isn't good discouragement, if the vast majority have no consequences.

People who act in a way that endangers others need to have their actions corrected, regardless of their intent, and regardless of the actual consequences of the specific act.

Right?

So, if unsafe actions are dealt with appropriately as a matter of course, then what's the problem with letting it slide after a major incident, in order to get a good investigation?

You said that the Patel issue is a clear example that giving people cookies and acting as if nothing bad happened doesn't make the problem go away. I don't understand exactly what you meant.

God forbid that Patel or any other doctor repeat his actions.
God forbid we don't change the system that allowed those actions for so long.

 

I'm going to take a break from this thread for a while. Things are getting a bit heated, and we're misinterpreting each other.

I know I have. It's too easy to read motivations in others that aren't there when you're arguing a case.

So sorry Bells, kira, Read-Only, and everyone for any exaggerations, strawmen, issue avoidance, and other dodgy logic dance moves I've perpetrated.


Will definitely talk again in a few days. This is a really good thread.

 

Bells you want a clear example of this look at the royal commission into the victorian bushfires. What should have been a strict look into where the system failed became a witch hunt to blame Christine Nixson for going out to dinner. Sure it was a stupid thing to do in hindsight but it would have made ZERO difference to the outcome, the biggest failures were made MONTHS before the actual fires but people just wanted someone to blame and it was her head they decided they wanted. It could just as easerly been the Emergency service minster or Steve Bracks head on a platter and with as little reason, there were problems sure but they were in build standeds, burn offs ect not (for the most part) in the responce. The responce was overwhelmed and thats not really surprising when you concider whole towns were wiped off the map and the CFA and police were helpless before it.

However insted of learning the lessons people turned the commission into trying to find someone, anyone to blame and that is exactly what you have done here. 33 people are dead so there must be someones head we can have so we can put it on a spike for all to see and then we can "move on". Yea sure and then the next major event happens and people wonder why.

The same thing happened in Japan, the Tsnamie was twice the size of any recorded, the ocean floor moved 26m side ways and 6m vertically in a few seconds. Who could predict that but after the event people are calling for the head of the nuke plant because "he should have known". Its not rational and its not useful

The same thing is happerning in Queensland with people blamming the whole thing on whoever didnt empty the dam so that there was enough capacity, never mind that that would itself have caused flooding.

Sure its easy to blame 1 person or a group of people. Goverments have been brought down for alot of things that wernt actually there fault, its alot harder to take a deep breath, take 2 steps back and say "ok how do we stop this situation happerning again". Its also alot more useful because no matter how many goverments you toss out, no matter how many heads you put on spikes the root cause of the problems will still be there and they will keep happerning unless we stop reacting and start accepting that sometimes things happen and how do we put systems in place to prevent these things from occuring.

I was recently hurt at work, it was quite a minor injury which broke one of my teeth but it could have been alot worse. Now the first thing my boss did when i saw him the next day was go through exactly what happened, not to put the blame back on me but rather to prevent it the next time. His second question was "what do i think could be done in future to prevent the same acident happerning again". This is the sort of aproch that is needed. Now sure i could take the company to court for failure to provide a safe enviroment, they would probably take another company to court for providing faulty goods and we would all end up settling out of court under confidentuality agreements and nothing would change so what would be the point.

 

bells you want to start charging people for food poisioning you need to tripple the legal system if not more. 90% of food posioning occure in the home

 

And it happens every day, the only difference is that it's salmonella Poisioning caused by chicken juice dripping on the letus

 

Once again you seem to get the facts wrong:

Checking the 2009 Commission Report on the fire, it contains a great deal of data and recomendations on the fire, but it most certainly doesn't blame Nixon.

What it does say is just about what you just wrote:

In fact they made 67 Recommendations about changes needed for ROOT CAUSE, and none of them was to sack Ms Nixon (one was to create a Fire Commissioner instead of having the head of police in charge of fire responses).

http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report/Summary/Interactive-Version

Arthur

 

That's good but that's NOT what the royal commission turned into. The lawyers turned the whole thing into blame Christine, as did the media and the oposition, the fact that the recomendations and findings are more sensible is quite behond the point. Trust me what came out of it was not what went in, even in SA we herd a lot of the bull that was going on and it was a compleate witch hunt, especially the media cirus surounding it. You can read reports all you like but they don't tell the whole story

 

Not really.
The report is quite detailed and has very specific recommendations which is the point of the Commission and totally in contrast to what you claimed:

But that is clearly NOT what the Commission did as it's detailed recommendations are exactly what you say was needed and they didn't lay inordinate blame on Nixon in the process.

On the other hand you should know by know that the media is just for entertainment, so when the Media found out in one of the Commissions hearings that Nixon went out to dinner in the middle of the worst fire day, the Media (and not the Commission) tried to make that revelation into NEWS (and probably succeeded, since Nixon eventually stepped down as head of the Fire Reconstruction board).

Arthur

 

Possibly.

First question: Does it involve intent?

If yes, then throw the book at them, up to and including murder charges.

If Not: Then does it involve Gross Negligence, similar to the cases that Kira posted, where obvious and well known health standards were being ignored?

If yes, then punish them sufficently that others in the same line of work will think twice before behaving similarly. A large fine and a reasonable jail sentence would be expected in this case with the severity of the punishment related to the amount of, and frequency of the gross negligence exhibited.

If Not: Then does it involve more common negligence, such as a failure to wash your hands with soap and hot water after using the bathroom one time even though evidence might show this is their normal behavior?

If yes, then punishment should be tempered with the knowledge that there was no intent or gross negligence but still the person made a poor decision and we want others in the industry to hear about this and the possible consequences, so it has to be more than just don't do it again. A trial, a small amount of jail time and many hours of community service at a Dialysis Center might be an appropriate punishment.

If Not: Was it a total accident in that the person was following established procedures designed to prevent contamination, but makes an error in the procedure such as reading a value for the amount of sanitizer needed in KGs but then accidentally measuring out the sanitizer to be used in LBs?

If yes, then legal punishment is probably not in order at all but getting regulatory bodies involved to help figure out how to prevent the same kind of error in the future is.

Arthur

 

Update on the German E Coli outbreak.

The link becomes even longer and thus the ability to find anyone to blame (no matter how much you want to) becomes even more unlikely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/world/middleeast/30ecoli.html
http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/2011June29_RA_JOINT_EFSA_STEC_France.pdf

Arthur