What's with the Times lately and stories about (and, of course, photos of) horribly deformed children? Both the baby with Niemann-Pick disease Type A (aka the baby with the hairy face) and Sam, the eight-year-old with progeria, are tragic stories, but these diseases are incredibly rare. The appeal in covering them seems not to be the fact that the suffering of even a few is important (it is) but that people are intrigued by pictures of those who would once have been called freaks. And yet a PC, concerned Times readership only feels comfortable gasping at pictures of children who resemble old men and babies with hairy faces when these pictures are accompanied by sensitive, scientific articles.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Read it for the articles
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1 comment:
I don't think it's the desire to look at people with weird genetic disorders as much as the desire to read about them--look how well Middlesex did in sales. One day, science will find the "rubbernecking" gene.
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