I’m not so sure that the answer is “none”, but I’d lean towards “not much”. It depends on several factors. One person has said that a nurse called in warning of H2O poisoning. That’s a point against the radio station right there. However, if they had the contestants sign a waver acknowledging that there was some potential dangers, then that, in my mind, negates their liability. If the DJs were told of this possibility by the nurse and then they ignored it or actively tried to conceal it, then that action would increase their liability. Still, people do all kinds of stupid things for all kinds of stupid reasons and sometimes they die from them. It’s a tragedy, but it happens. Bottom line is, they chose to assume the risk in an attempt to gain a reward. Let me ask you this: Suppose the station had had a “walk for a wii” contest. The contestants came to a local high school track, and whoever walked the furthest in two hours won the wii. Pretty harmless, right? What if the day of the contest happens to be hot and someone died of heatstroke, is that the radio station’s fault? How about the Coney Island Polar Bears club? They’ve been jumping into the ocean on Jan. 1 for over a hundred years to raise money for charity. This year someone died because they dove head first into the water and hit a sandbar. Should the Polar Bear Club be outlawed? Should the Camp Sunshine(the charity that they were raising money for) be sued for encouraging a dangerous practice? Where exactly does personal responsibility come into play? Unless someone is promoting a contest that is designed to be dangerous (your hand grenades), I think it’s up to the individual to determine for them self weather the reward is worth the risk. Let’s be honest here, overdosing on water is a rare event. AFAIK none of the other contestants had any health problems, did they? Dying of heatstroke is an uncommon event. Dying during the Polar Bear plunge is a rare event. Is every rare event the basis for a lawsuit, or do tragedies sometimes just happen? I feel for this woman’s husband. I ache for her kids. That doesn’t mean that I think “Someone’s got to pay!”
I think the distinguishing factor here is that the very nature of this event was practically guaranteed to cause harm. The reason this is so tragic is that anyone aware of the dangers of hyponatraemia could look at this contest and say in an instant that the contestants were being placed in significant danger. And indeed, someone did say that, but was rebuffed. The dangers here aren’t really comparable to the likelihood of someone suffering heart failure in a run, because the very basis of the entire competition was guaranteed to lead to hyponatraemia if continued to its intended conclusion.
No, I don’t think an organisation should be held liable for unfortunate tragedies, although I think that insurance for such occurrences is still advisable. But when an organisation concocts a situation in which one is almost certain to happen, ignores advice that a tragedy is likely, and lets someone go home while exhibiting symptoms of the very tragedy they were warned about, then that organisation should be nailed to the fucking wall. These people killed that woman through abject negligence.
So let me see… some posters here state that if the radio company had fully informed the contestants of the possible risks, and the liklehood of those ocurring, that somehow they would discharge their duty of care ?
That somehow all the responsibility transfers onto the contestant ?
Think about it !
What you are saying in effect, is that as long as all the participants were willing and fully aware of the risks in any competition, that the organisers of said competition would be safe from prosecution ?
Are we really advocating such an argument ?
Do we really wish to go right back to the Coliseum ?
I would be willing to bet that if such a thing were true, media organisations would be quite prepared to hold far more dangerous competitions, right up to and including gladiatorial combat, and if the rewards for the winners were great enough, there would be individuals quite prepared to risk all, and furthermore, there would be a nation of sickos who would just love to stump up the cash on pay per view.
We already have martial combat sports such as boxing, kickboxing and the like, where participants can suffer serious injury and death, but you will note, these are not the intended outcome, provision has to be made before a contest can take place, which means not only both sides understanding the risks conditions to be met regarding licencing for the participants and the promoters, the fast availability of medical intervention, referees and supervisors to enforce rules and determine the extent of harm.
If the organisation promoting the bout should fail miserably in its duties, then it would be in deep trouble, and individuals within that organisation would also be held to account.
At first glance, it appears to be a stupid accident, but it’s obvious to any reasonable person that even a modicum of foresight could have prevented this, and that it was entirely reasonable and forseeable that harm could occur.
We are not talking about somethign so extroadinary that it was virtually impossible to expect, such as a meteor descending from the heavens and striking one of the contestants, and just because something isn’t common knowledge to the ordinary person in the street, that really os no excuse.
There are many things I know that are not obvious and could cause serious harm, and yet only a small percentage of the population will know about them, and you can be sure there are many many times more things that a MD would know that are not general knowledge, but just a five minute phone conversation to such a person would have prevented this, and to me the death of an individual because of a lack of such obvious and basic bit of research is inexcusable.
If you organise any competition that places individual under physical stress, isn’t it reasonable to simply make a five minute phone call to a healthcare professional ?
I think it is, and for this oversight there surely has to be a case against the organiser, no matter how much responsibility you can place on the participants, our society deserves that such things be scrutinised in the courts.
You make sense, but I haven’t seen any evidence that water poisoning was “almost inevitable” in this situation. As I said, did any of the other contestants suffer from hyponatraemia? I’ll grant that this situation raised the chances of someone suffering from hyponatraemia dramatically, but walking in the sun dramatically increases your chances of getting heatstroke. That doesn’t mean that heatstroke is a likely outcome. That’s what I don’t know here. If a water drinking contest raises a person’s chance of suffering a water overdose from (I’m making all these numbers up here, this is what I don’t know), say a 1/100% chance to a 30-50% chance then I retract my previous statements in this thread. However, I’m under the impression that it raises the chances more like from 1/100% chance to 1/10% chance. A ten fold increase, to be sure, but still a rare event.
There is no such thing as “punishing the corporation.”
A corporation is not a human being. It cannot make decisions–only the people who work there and the people who own it can make decisions. It cannot learn. Again, only the people can learn. And it cannot be punished. Only its shareholders, board of directors, employees, business partners, and customers can be punished.
When a corporation “does something bad,” it’s really people working for the corporation that have committed those acts. Punish those people. Root out the irresponsible ones. Root out the criminal ones. Root out the ones who turned a blind eye to “corporate corruption” (which is actually corruption of individual people–are you getting this yet?). Fire all of those people and then decide whether they should be sued, charged as criminals, or otherwise punished.
If your grandma owned shares of Enron, did she deserve to be punished because Ken Lay was a criminal? The shareholders are the ones who lose their money when the corporation goes belly-up.
There are business models other than “charge what the market will bear.” Many businesses set their prices based on costs and profit margins. The insurance industry is a great example: their premium prices are directly connected to settlements and lawsuits. My “raise the prices” comment was only one of the possible scenarios I listed, and there are definitely cases where it works. Within a certain margin of pain, a radio station can raise prices to advertisers when it has to, but it angers advertisers, and they won’t do it lightly.
I’ve got no problem with that. NONE. Your life, your fully informed choice, go for it.
My understanding (and I am not a medical professional) is that it increases the chances from practically nil (people almost never drink litres upon litres of water without some unusual motivation) to a near-certainty if you keep drinking, particularly if no voiding occurs. By encouraging their participants to drink continuously and not urinate, the organisers were virtually guaranteeing that someone would be harmed.
The mechanism of hyponatraemia is basically that it drastically lowers the level of salt concentrations in the body’s fluids relative to that in the cells. As most high-schoolers learn in the experiment with the potato, a differential in solute concentrations starts to cause osmosis; in this case, water moves from the under-concentrated body fluids in to the cells of the body. This causes swelling of the cells, and in the case of the brain, enclosed in the skull, the pressure this causes has no place to go. It’s not really a matter of personal susceptibility (although some medications and conditions do affect the body’s ability to retain salts, altering the point at which it occurs). You’ve just got to drink enough water.
AIUI, if you keep on drinking water without urinating, hyponatraemia will occur (perspiration is practically negligible when drinking at the pace these people were encouraged to sustain). It’s not rare because the mechanism by which it occurs is tricky; it’s rare because people just don’t generally behave in the manner required to cause it. Under the conditions created, I really believe it was more or less inevitable, because the whole goal of the contest was to increase the levels of water in the contestants’ bodies until all but one of them broke. Essentially, they were gambling that sufficient people’s bladders would give way that the contest would be won before someone died. Given the inevitable disparities in body mass (it’s no surprise to me that a woman died), this is absolutely unsustainable. A 200lb male is going to be able to take on considerably more water than a 120lb woman before his fluid concentrations reach a dangerous level.
A doctor’s opinion might be nice here (Qadgop?) but as far as I can see, with enough competitors this contest would be likely to cause injury every time. I truly can’t believe anyone even countenanced it.
If you continue to drink water and not release any of it from your body, you will die, the only question is when (and if you can continue to drink without barfing, etc.) Different people’s bodies can hold out longer than others, especially given kidney function.
From the only guy I’ve seen interviewed, it sounded as if several of the contestants were indeed getting sick, though this one in particular tapped out because he couldn’t take it any longer.
Fluid imbalance isn’t just likely, it’s inevitable, provided that you can keep drinking past your comfort zones. Which is exactly what the contest was designed to have people compete to do.
But you’re missing that the contest is open ended. You keep drinking until everyone else drops out, but in fact human beings are capable of drinking water past the point where their bodies can get rid of it, especially if they force themselves to… which was exactly the whole motivation of the contest, to do exactly that.
The Miami Herald was reporting that another contestent said the waivers were almost entirely about publicity and didn’t say anything about the risk of serious harm or possible death.
Sherrod quit the contest after she vomited.
From the Mercury News:
In other words, she was exhibiting symptoms of water intoxication too; it sounds like she was just lucky enough that her stomach gave out before she ingested enough water to cause cerebral edema. That’s two people suffering from water intoxication in just one contest, and we’ve only heard about three individuals, one of them now dead. Does this begin to illustrate just how much danger these people were placed in?
I would be really naive to say “Well, did anyone else get sick?”
There are probably a ton of other factors that would influence a person’s risk. For example, I’m almost always riding the cusp of dehydration, I could probably pout away a lot more water than say… my sister if she happens to be retaining water right before her menses start.
The radio station set-up a contest that was inherently physically dangerous, and as far as what’s been reported, they didn’t consult with a medical professional. Using Gatorade (which has a lot of sodium) instead of water could have made a difference if they’d bothered to ask anyone.
For those comparing it to other stupid physical contest… often times those have medics present. I’ve never been to a martial arts tournament that didn’t have an ambulance or two on site “just in case,” and when I enter races there are always medics present whether it’s a half-marathon or just a five mile race. Even “walk for the cure” type events have ambulances at the ready just in case someone gets heat stroke or experience heart trouble or hyperventilates.
As for the woman who died… She should have done her homework too.
I agree, it was fully possible to conduct a contest of bladder control without killing the contestant(s).
That the woman didn’t do the homework of finding out about the risks doesn’t mean the radio station, as host and instigators of the event, didn’t need to.
Actually, one gave an opinion in post 76. Perhaps he should have emphasized that it is rather counterintuitive that the risk of excessive water consumption is greatest in young (healthy) women. That is a fact that can hardly be said to be well known and certainly not predictable. Thus, the radio station people could not have been expected to disqualify such individuals. If anything, they may have prohibited older people, with heart conditions and the like, from participating. It wouldn’t have helped here.
Ah, I apologise; I wasn’t aware you were a doctor. Cheers for the info.
I’m not really sure that disqualifying high-risk individuals would really have helped much, however; surely that would just have raised the threshold at which hyponatraemia occurred in the first contestant? Given that the contest was a matter of drink-until-failure, the only difference screening by risk factors would seem to make is who gets injured first, and how long it takes.
Oh, I agree. I think the radio station was criminally negligent. The premise of the event was for you to participate until you were in physical distress. They didn’t without take into account any potential risks or providing safeguards of any kind. How do you get informed consent, if you don’t even know the risks yourself?
However in the interest of personal accountability, it’s wise not to enter into a physically demanding challenge without at least doing cursory research. Even if I knew nothing about water intoxication, I probaby still would have done a quick Google search to make sure I wasn’t going to hurt my bladder or kidneys. (But then “probably would have” is how people get hurt/sick participating in stupid events like this.)
Her tragic mistake was trusting the radio station would put together a silly-but-safe event, where the worst thing that could happen is that you’d wet your pants in public.
“As God is my witness, I thought that turkeys could fly…”.
Just heard 10 idiots from that station have been fired.
A Sacramento paper has also tracked down the nurse practitioner who called in. She and two co-workers called in to talk to the DJs via speakerphone to warn them of the dangers of water intoxication.
Another contestant, Jennifer Winsor, 46, of Sacramento, said she chugged eight 8-ounce bottles of water and nine 16-ounce bottles of water before she gave up and went to the bathroom.
Note that there have been several high profile cases where fluid imbalance has led to death or impairment. The linked article lists one, and of course, Terri Schiavo was another.