Headlines -- you can't trust them
Written on Thursday, November 08, 2007 by Jessica
CNN has a headline right now that says: "Toy contaminated with 'date rape' drug pulled."
Uh, no. The headline is incorrect. Here's the truth, which you find in the article's second paragraph:
Scientists have found the popular toy's coating contains a chemical that, once metabolized, converts into the toxic "date rape" drug GHB, or gamma-hydroxy butyrate.So first the child has to ingest is. Then the body converts into GHB (adrug often used in date rapes).
The product does not contain GHB, so how can it be contaminated by GHB? I guess what bothers me is that the headline makes it sound like someone was meddling with the toy, that they purposely added GHB so that they can rape little children.
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This whole thing is getting out of control and ridiculous. What are we supposed to buy our kids for the holidays? And why the heck were 10 year olds ingesting the beads to begin with? And another quote said that a 2 year old ate a dozen or so before vomiting and falling into a coma. Who was supervizing that?
Well, I'm not against the recall itself. The toy's specs called for a nontoxic glue, but the manufacturer substituted a toxic glue. That is grounds for a recall. Granted, a two year old shouldn't have been playing with it due to the choking hazard, but even so, if my child swallowed something like that, I would read the label to see if it was toxic. The Aqua Dots were supposed to be nontoxic, so I wouldn't have taken the proper steps right away to get him to the hospital, call the poison control center, etc.
So the recall itself doesn't bother me. I'm more bothered by the media's treatment of the subject. The headline makes it sound like some criminal is out to use the date-rape drug on children. Are they purposely injecting melodrama to capture the attention more viewers?
How about trying something constructive, like educating consumers that you can't always trust warning labels? No, no. Let's call it the date-rape drug and make it sound like some perv laced toys with it.
I cant believe the media would stoop to such blatant manipulation of the facts