Yesterday my youngest son was driving home from work when he saw a child, four or five years of age, toddling alone along the sidewalk. Concerned there was no adult in sight, he slowed, waited and finally called to the boy and asked if he was lost. At that moment a man and a woman turned the far corner and started down the street. They were obviously the parents and my son waved and drove off. The man smiled; the woman was furious. She may have written down his license number.
We have become very sensitive to certain risks in society. And our approach has been to emphasize the marginal, to accept no small chance. In spirit this is not unlike much of our approaches elsewhere. We do not stop therapy for the terminally ill, we will stop using a drug with a tiny complication rate, "impairment starts with one sip", we do not build nuclear plants because despite the country's safe nuclear history there is always that chance.
All hospitals now have newborn units that are isolated from the rest of the hospital with complex entrance codes; regular hospital ids, even for physicians, do not allow access and special response teams--for example cardiac arrest--are admitted to these units only by visual recognition. (I can not imagine how anyone would get out in a fire.)
My shoes were x-rayed by airline security this weekend.
Every college campus has a rape counselling center.
These precautions are taken against terrible but rare crimes that the society takes very seriously.(In the last several decades I can recall three specific and separate instances where day care employees were tried--and convicted--for crimes against children that included acts that were physically impossible and at any other time in history would be considered witchcraft.)The original estimates of campus rape reported by Koss was one in four. 25%! (The chance of being the victim of any felony in Detroit is 2%.) Yet the average visit to a campus rape center is 5 women annually for private schools, proportionally higher for larger. Kidnapping of newborns in hospitals from 1983 to 2006 averaged 5 in 4,000,000 births annually. 1 in 800,000. Shoe bombers are rare as well. There are 23,000 kidnappings in the U.S. a year, over 80% by family or acquaintances. In 1999 115 children were taken by strangers overnight for the purpose of abuse or ransom. 115 in 40,000,000.Yet these are crimes that are personal and community disasters. What cost or inconvenience should be spared?
In a culture that seems to be searching for community, suspicion and fear are ruinous acids in the cultural fabric. Individual experience will always trump general experience. I have no answer to this but I do have advice for all males: Protect yourself first. Always , always think the worst. The worst will be thought of you.
We have become very sensitive to certain risks in society. And our approach has been to emphasize the marginal, to accept no small chance. In spirit this is not unlike much of our approaches elsewhere. We do not stop therapy for the terminally ill, we will stop using a drug with a tiny complication rate, "impairment starts with one sip", we do not build nuclear plants because despite the country's safe nuclear history there is always that chance.
All hospitals now have newborn units that are isolated from the rest of the hospital with complex entrance codes; regular hospital ids, even for physicians, do not allow access and special response teams--for example cardiac arrest--are admitted to these units only by visual recognition. (I can not imagine how anyone would get out in a fire.)
My shoes were x-rayed by airline security this weekend.
Every college campus has a rape counselling center.
These precautions are taken against terrible but rare crimes that the society takes very seriously.(In the last several decades I can recall three specific and separate instances where day care employees were tried--and convicted--for crimes against children that included acts that were physically impossible and at any other time in history would be considered witchcraft.)The original estimates of campus rape reported by Koss was one in four. 25%! (The chance of being the victim of any felony in Detroit is 2%.) Yet the average visit to a campus rape center is 5 women annually for private schools, proportionally higher for larger. Kidnapping of newborns in hospitals from 1983 to 2006 averaged 5 in 4,000,000 births annually. 1 in 800,000. Shoe bombers are rare as well. There are 23,000 kidnappings in the U.S. a year, over 80% by family or acquaintances. In 1999 115 children were taken by strangers overnight for the purpose of abuse or ransom. 115 in 40,000,000.Yet these are crimes that are personal and community disasters. What cost or inconvenience should be spared?
In a culture that seems to be searching for community, suspicion and fear are ruinous acids in the cultural fabric. Individual experience will always trump general experience. I have no answer to this but I do have advice for all males: Protect yourself first. Always , always think the worst. The worst will be thought of you.
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