{"id":9751,"date":"2019-02-21T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justrightmedia.org\/blog\/?p=9751"},"modified":"2019-02-27T20:51:52","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T01:51:52","slug":"596-preventative-prescription-pathologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/archives\/9751","title":{"rendered":"596 – Preventative prescription pathologies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"police

It\u2019s remarkable how many people passionately support government initiatives for reasons demonstrably false and\/or contrary to their own declared intentions or objectives.<\/p>\n

Today, we examine three issues where this phenomenon prevails. (1) the promotion of gun control<\/strong> as a means of \u2018preventing\u2019 injuries and death; (2) the promotion of a \u2018single payer<\/strong>\u2019 state run system to \u2018prevent\u2019 those in need of medical care from being unable to pay for such care; and (3) the support of \u2018Amber Alerts<\/strong>\u2019 as a means of \u2018preventing\u2019 tragic outcomes in criminal child abduction cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,\u201d goes the old saying. But this once reasonable perspective has now been turned into a \u2018pathology\u2019 of \u2018preventative prescriptions\u2019 that have more to do with creating narratives, than with \u2018preventing\u2019 undesirable outcomes.<\/p>\n

The latest example occurred last week when an \u201cAmber Alert\u201d was issued in Ontario regarding the abduction of 11-year-old Riya Rajkumar. Police received hundreds of complaints about how the alert was issued, and with good reason.<\/p>\n

There are two issues involving Amber alerts. (1) the effectiveness of the alerts themselves, and (2) the unwarranted manner in which the alerts are issued.<\/p>\n

Shamefully, the emotional public reactions directed against those who complained about being woken and frightened by the alert became irrational and openly abusive<\/strong>. Subjected to self-indulgent \u2018virtue signaling\u2019 and outright threats, those who were upset by the alert soon became its real victims. We\u2019d like to believe that all the misdirected emotion was rooted in the natural fear that all parents have about the possibility of their own children being abducted, and in the natural empathy all share regarding the murder of Riya Rajkumar at the hands of her own father.<\/p>\n

But many equated a natural reaction to being terrorized and waken by the alert with a lack of concern for the victim, or with opposition to the very idea of an alert itself. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that\u2019s not the way the mainstream media and authorities are spinning it. (Even if a lack of concern for the victim had been a factor, it would not have justified the moral outrage directed at those who complained about the alert.)<\/p>\n

For the record, Amber Alerts are surprisingly ineffective, and we have been hard pressed to find even one valid instance where any \u2018lives have been saved\u2019 by an Amber Alert system.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Indeed, various studies, like the ones conducted by scholars Timothy Griffin and co-author Monica Miller, have concluded that there is \u201clittle evidence that Amber Alerts routinely \u2018saved lives,\u2019\u201d and that \u201cAmber Alerts actually had little apparent role in the eventual return of abducted children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worse, the researchers were forced to conclude that because the Amber Alert systems are \u201cinherently constrained\u201d to be ineffective for their intended purpose, \u201cthe implied causal mode of alert (rapid recovery can save lives) is in a sense the opposite of reality\u2026\u201d But \u201cbecause the system is publicly praised for saving lives despite its limitations,\u201d Griffin and Miller argue that an Amber Alert acts as \u201ccrime control theatre\u201d in that it \u201ccreates the appearance but not the fact of crime control<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In every sense, the Griffin and Miller observations can be applied to Ontario\u2019s latest alert. Griffin has recommended taking a closer look at the evaluation of the program and its intended purpose, instead of simply promoting the program. We agree \u2013 because we actually care about the safety of the children.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, we are critically aware that for some, \u2018facts <\/strong>don\u2019t matter.\u2019 They are the people who will always choose to continue being \u2018just emotional<\/strong>,\u2019 rather than make any effort to discover what is Just Right.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s remarkable how many people passionately support government initiatives for reasons demonstrably false and\/or contrary to their own declared intentions or objectives. Today, we examine three issues where this phenomenon prevails. (1) the promotion of gun control as a means of \u2018preventing\u2019 injuries and death; (2) the promotion of a \u2018single payer\u2019 state run system [Continue Reading]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,605,439,28,598],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio","category-crime-society","category-health-care","category-latest","category-society","issues-amber-alert","issues-health-care","issues-prevention","category-12-id","category-605-id","category-439-id","category-28-id","category-598-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9751"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9758,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9751\/revisions\/9758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}