So people didn't want to see a loss of human life in the case of abortion, so how about police chases?

'Horror crash' sparks calls for police chase ban
Posted 8 minutes ago


The force of the impact tore the family's car in two. (ABC)

MAP: Narrabundah 2604
RELATED STORY: Family killed after police pursuit
Civil libertarians are calling for a moratorium on police pursuits after the deaths of four people in a police car chase overnight in Canberra.

A baby boy and both his parents were killed when a 23-year-old man driving a stolen vehicle crashed into their car.

New South Wales police were pursuing the man from Queanbeyan, but say they had called off the chase just before the crash.

An investigation is underway into the incident but the head of the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, says a national policy needs to be developed concerning police pursuits.

"I think we need to stop them until the police organise a way to do car chases safely," he said.

"The problem at the moment is that police are balancing the need to apprehend a suspect with the lives of innocent people when they should be putting the lives of innocent people first."

But the New South Wales Government has defended the use of police pursuits.

New South Wales Attorney General John Hatzistergos says it would be a mistake to abandon them.

"It almost invites people to flee and to avoid the police after potentially having committed very serious crimes," he said.

Meanwhile, family members have paid tribute to the Canberra couple and their baby, who were killed.

Trevor Kelly, who is the brother-in-law of the father killed, says he is in shock. He says both parents were good people with hearts of gold.

"Really nice people - they'd do anything for you - a heart of gold," he said.

He says the family was visiting the baby's grandfather.

The force of the impact tore the family's car in two.

The driver of the stolen car died later in hospital.

New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione says the police officers were "simply doing their job".

"It was never going to end well and every speeding event, anyone that's involved has to realise that these types of events are dangerous," he said.

"That's why we keep putting it out there, the warning, the message, be careful.

"Speeding is one of the greatest contributors to deaths on our roads."

ACT chief police officer Roman Quaedvlieg says it is too early to say whether police protocols need to be reviewed.

He says it is a horrifying accident and his sympathies are with the relatives of the four people killed.

"We would need to await the outcome of this investigation - there's a collision investigation and then as a corollary there's also an investigation which is a joint one between the NSW and ACT police in relation to procedural matters," he said.

"Once we know the outcome of that there may be calls for review.

arry: "So people didn't want to see a loss of human life in the case of abortion, so how about police chases?"

What an amazing way to start a thread. Since liberals insist an abortion does not involve taking a human life, I cannot see a single link to connect police chases and abortion. Why don't we compare police chases with government health insurance? Or perhaps abortion with climate change?

The subject of police chases using vehicles is complex and I don't think a blanket policy of no chases is reasonable or ethical.

arry
I do see a link between an abortion and a death resulting from a car chase, however I think there is a big difference. The aim of of an abortion is to deliberately take the life of the unborn, while deaths resulting from a car chase, are a tragic but unplanned outcome.
This topic certainly needs to be adressed as too many bystanders have been killed this way. The recent all day escapade in Perth, where a thief stole and hi jacked a total of four cars in succession was allowed to happen because commanding officers refused permission for the persuing police to use excess speed. No one was killed so their call was a good one I guess.

While we're on the subject of valueing human life, many Iraqis have got new problems to contend with.
Depleted uranium a bi product of weaponery used, especially in the seige of Fallujah is causing masses of cancers and birth defects.
I ask, why are some modern weapons designed to have such long lasting life terminating powers?
The link below is a conservative view in an effort to be unbiased as the cause of the problems has not been categorically proven.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 052479.ece

Christine

You should be ashamed.

You make the following statement.




Yet the the story you linked to explicitly doesn't support your claim.

Where is your proof that the incidence of cancer is greater now than previously? Where is your proof DU is causing any diseaases or birth defects.

Brutal battle
City of Fallujah saw heavy fighting

In November 2004 Fallujah was the scene of intense fighting as US marines recaptured the town from insurgents in one of the biggest urban offensives since Vietnam. Troops used flares of white phosphorus, a toxic substance, to illuminate enemy positions, but they say it was not used as a weapon, which is illegal under international law. It is not known whether the US also used bombs containing depleted uranium (DU), which is weakly radioactive. Some Iraqis suggest there is a link between these chemicals and the deformities seen in children. However, a United Nations study after the Kosovo conflict concluded that the probability of significant exposure to DU, even after military action, was low.

Scientific doubts
With data patchy, the cause is still unclear

Experts warned against reading too much into the findings from Fallujah. Alastair Hay, professor of genetics, health and therapeutics at Leeds University, said the cause of the birth defects remained unclear. Narmin Othman, the Iraqi environment minister, said: “The general health of the city is not good. There is no sewerage system and there is a lot of stagnant household waste, creating sickness.” She said water quality was poor because drought had limited the flow of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Doctors have only recently begun to compile accurate data on the number of birth defects. A detailed investigation will be necessary if researchers are to identify the cause of the apparent rise in abnormalities.

Patrick,


I agree entirely but I think that the authorities ought to ban chases simply to illustrate the results, there will soon be calls for their reinstatement.

Kookaburra
Well I'm not ashamed.
The military continually ducks attempts to confront the evidence as it did after the emergence of damaging evidence against its use of agent orange in Vietnam.

Asbestos was known to cause early death amongst those who worked with it, a hundred years before it was banned in Australia. As a people we are amongst the slowest to remove our heads from the sand.

Unfortunately human life usually comes in third position after financial and political advantage, actually there's nothing surprising about this event in Iraq.
http://www.gulfwarvets.com/du_cancerclusters.htm

And the dangers of asbestors are grossly exaggerated. Of course, a lot of attorneys and politicians made a bundle of money over frightening people about it. Hyper-hydration, consuming too much water too rapidly, can result in death but the attorneys and politicians haven't figured out a way to make money from frightening people about water.

Asbestos has become a bogey to the point where men in protective clothing are called in to remove asbestos cement roofing sheets that are covered in paint. No one has got around to panicing about the 100s of 1,000s of homes that have asbestos cement wall clading.

I worked with asbestos, on and off, for over 35 years and have no symptoms of asbestosis or any other lung problem, but I understood and followed safety procedures, unfortunately not everyone else did or were even informed of the potential dangers. Common sense dictated that asbestos was dangerous simply because it could be a dust, by 1950 at least the information was freely available that dust, any dust, caused health risks. Coal mining, flour-milling (and baking) and hairdressing were all known as occupations where fine particles could cause lung problems.

Samuel ,

I am presently forced to endure the sight of my husband slowly suffocating after contracting mesothelioma from working with Hardie building materials as a carpenter, as a young man in New South Wales. We are told he probably only has months to live.

My son will not work on a building site that contains asbestos although many other people are completely oblivious. As you rightly point out, there is masses of it about, and people do renovations without realising their walls are asbestos
West Australia has the highest incidence of sufferers world wide, due to the gay abandon with which it is customary to treat it.
The youngest person to die of mesothelioma in Britain was a woman who walked past a factory yard on her way to school and apparently inhaled some fibres.
Its deadly and undetectable to the human eye.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... chool.html

arry wrote:

So people didn't want to see a loss of human life in the case of abortion, so how about police chases?

The use of the word "people" is disingenuous. That was not the conclusion of the recent posts on the topic of abortion and it misrepresents what many have said. Your tail question "how about car chases?" reworded in full is asking "Do people not want to see a loss of human life in the case of car chases?" Sorry, but the proposition/question/dilemma is simply poor thought out and seems simply aimed at inflaming others, as it has done.

Christine,

That is quite sad and I am only too well aware that had I not gone into engineering but had followed my other choice of carpentry then things might have been entirely different for me. The building trade had to cut asbestos sheets in the normal course of their day's work and it was cut dry with the resultant dust being free to do its deadly work. In engineering, and particularly in the Army, we never worked with dry asbestos, it was always wet thoroughly before we used it and we'd wet any that we were removing before we started. Not that the Army preached safety particularly but they didn't like a mess so the least dust was the rule.

I am angered at the way that Executives and Senior staff of James Hardie, who full well knew of the dangers even back in the 1930s got off relatively scot free.

But the issue isn't, for me, whether we should allow vehiclular chases or not or allow abortions or not or use asbestos or not. In the U.S., we have to learn that problems aren't usually solved by the simplistic all-or-nothing thinking we generally use. For abortions it isn't that either the woman has control over reproductive rights or she doesn't, for chases it isn't that the police either exceed certain speeds whenever they want or they don't, and so forth.

Christine,

You aren't ashamed about making spurious claims?

I bet there will be people who link to your post as pro their claims about DU. After all a quote of a claim appearing in the blogosphere is a fact.

You bring up Agent orange. Could you provide some facts. Would it be a reasonable assumption that those air and ground crew who participated in Operation RANCH HAND would have the highest exposures to Agent orange? In the 30 years ince this how has their morbidity/mortality rates differed from the rest of the US population? Same question applies with regard to the population of those americans who served in Vietnam?

If there is no statistical difference amongst these people, could it be all of the Agent orange horror stories are so much hype.

I understand the US Veteran's Administration has determined that certain disease are presumed to be caused by military service in Vietnam or the persian Gulf. They didn't base it on scientific evidence, but on public relations. Of course they are the same folks who are paying benefits to 900+ POWs from Viet Nam when there are less than 700. Or better yet from the first persian gulf war they are paying almost 300 people POW benefits when there were only 21 US POWs.

Even if Agent orange was 100% true does that excuse fabricating claims about DU?

Bringing it back to police chases... does the benefit to the community of police being able to chase car thieves outweigh the cost of a young life?

And... does the benefit to the community of a young mother being able to have an abortion outweigh the cost of a young life?

We are willing to sacrifice life in some circumstances, the question is always, in what circumstances is it ethical to do so?

Patrick
With respect I don't think our society is quite as ruled by greedy attorneys (lawyers) as the US.
I saw an episode of th US TV show The Doctors where one of the medicos stated that it was not possible to get mesothelioma unless you had worked with it for many years. Was he on Hardie's payroll perhaps? I don't know, anyway this is categorically untrue. Its possible to get it from one fibre, and its only because such casualness was used in its application that it is scattered around the way it is for anyone to inhale.
Presently we live in a less litigatious climate then you as far as exploitation goes thank God.

My husband had very few English skills, at that time, and anyway the fibro sheeting was not required to be labelled.
There are workers around with asbestos related diseases contracted comparatively recently by working for Lang Hancock at Wittenoom. He put miners to work without proper protective gear. The only comfort to be drawn from it is that he married Rose. Are you familiar with the Phillapina ex maid who said to a friend "he's old and he's smelly but I'm going to marry him"? She made him a bit of a laughing stock and he had to have her removed by force when he was on his death bed as she tried to wrangle a change to his will.

I have no desire at all to make spurious claims, although I know there are some out there that do.

I also know that there are people that avoid facing negative findings about activities they may have been responsible for.

Christine,

I've read the saga and they were made for each other, not only that, but they deserved each other.