Protection or over-protection?
From the Editor's Desk
Arthur McLean
I've been seeing this commercial on TV lately about Meningitis. It starts off innocently enough, with animation made to look like a teen's doodlings in a notebook and the voice-over talks about the teen years being one of wonderment, discovery and whatnot.

But it soon turns dark and scary. The animated flower wilts, the page cracks. The voice over, still sounding calm cool and collected, like an accountant dishes out all the ways your child could contract this horrible sounding disease.

Sharing sodas or even "close contact" with other, presumably infected teens could surely spread this disease to your child.

Hello fear mongering. Don't let your child near any other teens. You don't know if they could be carrying meningitis.

Best bet? Keep them locked in your basement? No, probably mold down there. Probably deadly mold in the air in the rest of the house too. I saw a commercial about that a few years ago.

Maybe we could keep them outside in fenced in the back yard. Nope. You got deadly UV rays and Lyme disease carrying ticks there. Saw commercials about them too.

Can't keep 'em in the front yard. Predators are circling the street like sharks on a chum frenzy waiting to scoop them up there. I think I saw some TV programs about that.

Of course, you should never let a child within 500 feet of an Internet connection. Any closer than that and your computer will become infested with spam, be taken over by the underworld, drain your bank accounts, and those darn predators are on there too. I saw some TV commercials about that once too.

But fear not mothers and fathers of teens in America. The meningitis ad directs us to a very helpful web site where one can find information about the disease and how to protect your curious teen. One of the suggestions repeated on every page I saw was to get them vaccinated against this disease.

That's very helpful indeed. I wonder who would be so generous as to spend all this money for television ads and a really nicely done web site. Oh, it happens to be paid for by a drug company. And that drug company just so happens to have a newly approved vaccine for meningitis. Well isn't that special.

Possible side effects of reading this column may include dizziness, drowsiness, ink-stained fingers, a heaping dose of cynicism, eye-rolling, laughter (though rare) and dry mouth. You should not attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery while reading this column.

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