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A jury in Washington, D.C., recently decided that baking-soda boxes do not convey adequate warnings about the hazardous nature of bicarbonate of soda.
William Graves, editor of National Geographic magazine, ingested two martinis, chili with corn chips, a salad, corn bread, wine, assorted cookies and a snifter of brandy.
For some mysterious reason, he suffered indigestion later that evening. He tried the traditional home remedy, a teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water. An internal explosion then ripped a 2 1/2-inch hole in his stomach. He sued Church & Dwight, the Arm and Hammer company.
Any normal childhood involves hands-on learning about energetic acid-base reactions by mixing baking soda with vinegar in order to propel rockets or torture cats, but now we'll need a better warning on the baking-soda box.
What will the label say? Will it be like the Clorox
bottle, with its cryptic It is a violation of Federal
law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its
labeling
? Or like a beer can, with fine print to the
effect that According to the Surgeon General, men should
not imbibe alkaline concoctions during indigestion because
of the risk of an immediate explosion
?
Granted, it is easy to make fun of warning labels, but in actuality, we may need more of them.
For instance, the next time President Bush speaks via satellite TV to a docile convocation of Christians for a Bigger Military or the like, there should be a warning at the bottom of the screen:
Soft questions and scintillating answers which appear
spontaneous are in fact scripted by the White House press
office. According to the Surgeon General, it is dangerous
to your mental health to believe that what you see here
bears any relationship to objective reality.
Every piece of United Airlines advertising should also
bear a warning: Denver International Airport, the City
and County of Denver and the State of Colorado have
determined that dealing with this corporation may result in
a lowered credit rating, as well as ridicule and the
contempt of the tax-paying public.
On all those toy ads you see this time of year:
Purchasing this plaything means three hours to find a
place to park and then elbowing through surly crowds while
your head reverberates with Muzak carols. The toy will not
remain operational for more than two hours, but that is at
least one hour longer than any child will maintain interest
in it.
Your next credit-card statement might carry this caveat
in tiny type: Wall Street has determined that any
attempt to reduce our usurious annual rate of 27 percent
compounded hourly will cause a total economic
collapse.
At the entrances to family-planning clinics, we might
see various small signs: This facility receives federal
funds, so the staff is legally forbidden to mention the
A-word,
Entrances and exits often blocked by
Operation Rescue protesters,
or It has been
determined that this is a propaganda mill masquerading as
an abortion mill.
And the next time Magic Johnson appears on TV, we should
see a crawler: The above expert on safe sex enjoyed
caring and sensitive relationships with upward of 1,000
women, and still somehow believed he was immune to sexually
transmitted diseases.
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