A punishment to fit the crime.

It seems to me, that there is, sometimes, only one punishment to fit a crime - only one punishment which seems punishment enough for an evil deed. One such evil deed, has come to light, in China. Eight people have been arrested for something truly terrible. I would like you to guess what. Please use liberal doses of imagination. Just try to guess what crime eight Chinese people could have thought up, in the name of making some money.

Please have a good think. I want you to imagine the most imaginative, but cruel, crime you can.

Well, what have you come up with? How does it compare to manufacturing and selling FAKE RABIES VACCINES in a country rife with rabies. Please pause to reflect on what that means. Rabies is one of the most horrible ways to die imaginable. It is also essentially 100% fatal once symptoms begin, which are, at first, loss of appetite, fever, pain at the site of infection, malaise, fatigue and headache. They then progress, two to ten days later, to disorientation, hallucinations, seizure, paralysis, and the fabled "fear of water" combined with an inability to swallow liquids without great pain. Death often ensues from cardiac or respiratory failure, though sometimes patients can linger for months on life support, in a coma.

Now, these eight Chinese people manufactured and sold over a thousand doses (1,260 doses have been recovered) of fake vaccine without any capacity to immunize a patient. Six doses of this vaccine were given to a four year old boy who had been bitten by a dog. He subsequently died of a completely preventable case of rabies. That is monstrous.

These criminals sold their "vaccines" for 330,000 Yuan, which is 49,250 US Dollars. That, to them, was justification enough for putting in peril the lives of all who received their vaccine.

Under Chinese law, it is certain that these people will be sentenced to death, should they be convicted. Yet, death by shooting, as might be expected, does not seem an appropriate punishment: it is too quick, too sudden, too fleeting. No. The only suitable punishment - and one in which they would assuredly learn to understand what they had done, is if they are given an injection of LIVE rabies virus. They should then be held in isolation, so that they won't infect others, until they die, rather slowly of the disease they sought to inflict on random strangers, for a few bucks.

My proposal might be objected to, by some, as inhumane, or as "cruel and unusual punishment". No. It is not. It is merely ensuring that the perpetrators suffer in precisely the way they made others suffer, including a little four year old boy, who died needlessly, and terribly, at the beginning of his life.

It seems to me that, were it known, criminals of the breed in question would assuredly suffer the death that they hazarded for others, there would be far fewer of them.

I shall return to more customary topics for tomorrow's posting, but I felt that I had to comment given my shock at what these people are alleged to have done, for mere money.

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