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.
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.
ReplyDelete