whence personal responsibility?

[cellio]

A story in today's paper reported that in Richmond VA, in a city park with fenced areas for animals, the park-keepers killed two black bears because one of them bit a child and they had to find out if there was a threat of rabies. (The only test for rabies in an animal kills the animal.) These bears have been in that park for years, and when the news broke (days after the deed was done), people in the community were outraged.

The child, four years old and accompanied by his mother, bypassed one four-foot-high barrier and then put his hand through a larger chain-link fence. The article didn't say, but I assume there were plenty of "keep away from the bears" signs too, in case two fences didn't make that point. The child got bitten (not badly enough to require stitches). Mom couldn't identify the biting bear, so both of the bears in that pen were killed.

Rabies is an unpleasant disease, but it is treatable. The treatment is painful, but many people have to undergo it because they have no choice. Sometimes you do something stupid and have to suffer the consequences; sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time and, yet, you still have to suffer the consequences. Life isn't fair, and sometimes no one is at fault.

Accidents happen, and the kid here is not to blame. For all we know, neither is the mother -- there are conflicting reports about whether she helped him climb the first barrier or looked away for a moment and he did it on his own. But that doesn't matter (except for settling the tort); even if this was completely an accident, a fluke, people have to accept some personal responsibility. It appears that someone made a decision to test the bears instead of treating the kid just in case; I think that decision was wrong.

There was clearly no fault on the part of the park or the bears themselves, so the child's discomfort is not adequate reason for killing the bears. The child, and the mother, could have gotten a valuable lesson about personal responsibility here, but they didn't. It probably didn't even occur to the parents, because we increasingly live in a world where the meme is "protection over everything, and when that doesn't work find someone to take it out on". But that doesn't help kids grow up into responsible adults, and you can't child-proof (and idiot-proof) the world anyway.

We are becoming, and raising, a nation of spoiled brats, who think that if they're unhappy, there must be someone to punish -- as if that makes anything any better. Punishment should be reserved for willful acts (including negligence). When there is clearly no fault, we need to minimize the overall damage, not our personal damage.

By the way, the bears tested negative.

Comments

[cellio]

Question: a rereading of your comment caused me to notice that you're talking about exposure, not suspected exposure. When I was in grade school one of my classmates was bitten by some wild critter, which they didn't catch, and he went through a series of rabies shots just in case. They didn't know that he was exposed, though; it was only a preventative measure. Do they not do that any more, or did my ten-year-old brain misfile what had happened?

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

My general understanding is that, given how bad the consequences of getting the decision wrong would be, that you err on the side of treatment if you can't catch the animal (even allowing for the non-zero chance of dying from the treatment). That may vary depending on what the local rabies footprint looks like.

I had a friend who was about five minutes ahead of me on the walk to school get bitten by a local dog when I was a kid; they ended up finding the dog and confirming it was uninfected, but it looked iffy for a bit while they were trying to track it down.

[spiritdancer]

If the critter doing the biting isn't available for testing or quarantine, then the human gets vaccinated.

And actually, the vaccine used now is a killed one grown in human cell culture, so there are fewer risks of reaction to the actual vaccine. The immunoglobulin you get for immediate protection until you respond to the vaccine, OTOH, is what causes most reactions.

Not to mention the cost (pre-exposure vaccination, for those at "high risk" runs about $1000 at cost for the vaccine.