Looking at other agents of death

In the aftermath of the Virginia shootings there have been some excellent comments regarding balance in responses. One in particular from romunov “More people die in car accidents every year, and no one is bitching about that.”

This issue has been bothering me, here in Australia, for some weeks now. The trigger was a week or so of sensational news reports, example Three dead, one missing after Sydney Harbour crash ABC Online, Australia - 28 Mar 2007.

I can have sympathy for the families involved, but the daily road carnage gets nowhere near the coverage, even international coverage, this story had. So water is swexy and roads aren’t.

Soon after we had the annual Easter death spree on Australian roads:

The New South Wales Easter road toll stands at six, while there have been three fatalities on Queensland roads, two in Western Australia and one in the ACT. Victoria's road toll for the holiday period was six. Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory remain fatality-free.

The numbers were broadcast throughout the period like a sort of horse race. Can we beat last years record? The only incident sensationalized was:

Three special operations troops, who had survived combat in the world's major trouble spots, died when their car crashed as they headed back to their base at the Swan Island military exercise site, southwest of Melbourne.

The rental vehicle veered off a bridge between Queenscliff and the island, and plunged into the water at high tide

No great carnage, just fuzzy shots of divers and their boats. Again, water is cool, but showing the reality isn’t.

26 people dead, over the few days of Easter, isn’t nearly as compelling as a school massacre I guess. It is just something we accept.

The interesting part of the Easter road deaths is that those jurisdictions in this country with the toughest road laws still had the highest number of deaths. I have not done a per capita, but acknowledge the larger populations.

While on death

Another ‘value of life’ issue making waves here is euthanasia. We were recently treated to our new federal Minister for the aging championing palliative care as a valid alternative to a rational choice to a dignified death.

At the same time we are seeing evidence that patients live somewhere between three and six months in palliative care. Part of the problem is that nursing homes are profit motivated and vastly understaffed. Not much dignity in that system.

The link between these issues is the way our societies make their judgements. Few, it seems, have any great respect for the value of life. The gun deaths are regrettable, deplorable. But so are the many other travesties we seem to encourage by innapropriate community standards.