It's No Accident By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Imagine this: You are a prosecutor. You indict a person for homicide. You type up a press release and plan to hold a press conference to announce the indictment. But before you say anything to the media about the indictment, you must first consult with the lawyer for the defendant. And under the law, the lawyer for the defendant has a right to veto anything you say in the press release, or at the press conference. And the lawyer for the defendant has the right to negotiate the wording of the press release. No prosecutor in his or her right mind would accept such an intrusion by a person accused of a crime. But a similar situation is being tolerated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the federal policing agency set up to enforce consumer protection laws, including those covering children's products made by companies such as Hasbro (Playskool), Mattel (Fisher-Price), Graco/Century Products, Evenflo, Cosco, Safety 1st and Kolcraft. Under the law that set up the CPSC, before the agency releases information to the public, it must notify the company of its intention. If the company disputes the accuracy or fairness of the information to be released, then the general counsel of the CPSC gets involved and the dispute over the press release could end up in federal court. But the CPSC is strapped for resources, and the result is, in most cases, the company gets its way. What's the consequence of such a policy? More than most, this policing agency has become subordinate to the industry it polices. And the result is that hundreds of innocent children are killed and thousands are injured by consumer products every year -- products that would have been pulled off the market by an independent agency not hamstrung by corporate interference. One such infant who died was Danny Keysar. In May 1998, 17-month old Danny was at a daycare home. His daycare provider put him down for a nap in a Playskool Travel-Lite portable crib. A short while later, when she went to check on him, she found that the crib had collapsed with Danny in it. His neck was caught in the rails. He wasn't breathing. He died. Marla Felcher, then a professor of marketing at Northwestern University, was a friend of Danny's parents. She attended Danny's funeral. At the funeral, Danny's mother urged Felcher to investigate why Danny died. Within a week of beginning her investigation, Felcher realized that Danny's death should never have happened. The crib that killed Danny had been recalled five years earlier. Danny was the fifth child to be killed by this particular Playskool portable crib model. Other companies manufactured cribs using the same design. And over 1.5 million units of other portable cribs had been recalled, and at least a dozen children have been killed in total. The whole idea of the portable crib is that it collapses easily. The top rails on these types of portable cribs have a hinge in the center. A child could stand up, grab onto the top rail, and collapse it. Danny's weight was strong enough to collapse the crib. When cribs of this sort collapse, the top rail bends at the center hinge, forms a "V" and the child is knocked down. His neck or chest can get caught in the grip of the V, and he is no longer able to breathe. The problem with the Playskool crib and others that were designed the same way is that it is possible for a caregiver to set up the crib and assume that it is locked into place, when it is not. "The coroners' reports on all these portable crib fatalities are shockingly similar -- the kid was found trapped in the 'V' of the folded crib rails," Felcher told us last week. The control that the consumer product industry has over the CPSC is truly mindboggling. For example, some products pose a serious risk of injury to children, while others present only a slight risk. But because the industry has a stranglehold over the information flow from CPSC to the public, reporters and consumer never find out whether the risk is serious or not. Thus while the CPSC rates how dangerous a product is -- A, B, C, D -- the rating is not made public. And because the CPSC is not aggressive in getting information out about product hazards, when it does recall a dangerous product, a very small percentage -- perhaps 10 to 30 percent -- of the product gets pulled off the market. One of those recalled products that failed to get pulled from the market was the crib that killed Danny Keysar. Felcher has written up the findings of her investigation in a book (It's No Accident: How the Infant Products Industry Compromises Baby Safety (Common Courage Press, February 2001)). And Danny's parents have set up a non-profit to help get dangerous children's products off the market (www.kidsindanger.org). But true progress won't be made until a new political culture sweeps Washington, one that values human life over the almighty dollar. Only then will the police be liberated from the death grip of the corporate elite. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999). 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