[net.consumers] Tylenol roulette

colonel@ellie.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (03/07/86)

> > concrete? Is it just that the interested parties are more comfortable
> > with the lone terrorist theory than shaking our faith in the system?
> 
> Based on your postings in net.politics, I think you would rather make
> a poorly reasoned statement like the one above, so you can blame big bad
> capitalism, rather than accept the fact that there are evil people out
> there who like to kill.

How does capitalism figure in this?  If blame is to be assigned to
something besides the poisoner, it's the company.  Whenever the head
of a organization treats his subordinates like dirt, his attitude poisons
the whole organization.  This is true on both sides of the iron curtain;
the poisonings could have happened just as easily in the USSR.

I'm not accusing Johnson & Johnson.  It _may_ be that the company
deserves what it's getting.  Had it given more consideration to
whom it hired and what it did with them afterwards, it might not be
in trouble now.
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
BI: csdsicher@sunyabva

cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (03/10/86)

> > > concrete? Is it just that the interested parties are more comfortable
> > > with the lone terrorist theory than shaking our faith in the system?
> > 
> > Based on your postings in net.politics, I think you would rather make
> > a poorly reasoned statement like the one above, so you can blame big bad
> > capitalism, rather than accept the fact that there are evil people out
> > there who like to kill.
> 
> How does capitalism figure in this?  If blame is to be assigned to
> something besides the poisoner, it's the company.  Whenever the head
> of a organization treats his subordinates like dirt, his attitude poisons
> the whole organization.  This is true on both sides of the iron curtain;
> the poisonings could have happened just as easily in the USSR.
> 
> I'm not accusing Johnson & Johnson.  It _may_ be that the company
> deserves what it's getting.  Had it given more consideration to
> whom it hired and what it did with them afterwards, it might not be
> in trouble now.
> -- 
> Col. G. L. Sicherman
> UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
> CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
> BI: csdsicher@sunyabva

Before we get completely carried away with this issue, let me say what
I told Barry Shein, the original poster.

If the facts justified this sort of accusation, I would not have been
so upset.  For example, the broken glass in the Gerber baby food problem
which is currently getting relatively little media attention sounds like
it might well be a manufacturing problem.  The problem is not local,
and there are about 200 reports so far (some of which may be people
attempting to defraud Gerber out of money).  The Tylenol case details
do NOT justify blaming the manufacturing system over the "lone
terrorist" theory.