The Dangers of Social Networking

The popular social networking site MySpace.com faces public scrutiny after a 13 year-old girl committed suicide last year. Apparently an ex-friend of the girl and her family created a fake profile of a boy named "josh" with which she had an online romance with for over a month. On November 15th, "Josh" sent her a message saying that they could no longer be friends because he had heard rumors about her and she would be better off dead. The girl, who had been suffering from depression for quite some time, hung herself in her bedroom the next day. 6 weeks after the incident, it was discovered that the profile was created by the mother of a girl who used to be friends with Meagan (the girl who committed suicide).

Upon trying to press charges against the woman who created the profile, Meagan's parents were told that there were no laws that this falls under. They are now trying to have new laws passed protecting children using the internet. Aside from the obvious mental instability of the grown adult who would participate in such a thing, Meagan was only 13 at the time and one is supposed to be a minimum of 14 years of age in order to create a MySpace profile. This brings up the issue of how to control who is using these sites and who is using false profiles.

A spokeswoman for MySpace failed to respond to calls seeking comment, but it is clear that something needs to be done in order to save their image. I am sure that this was not the first incident of its kind and I'm sure that it won't be the last. Any place where child predators and naive children have access to the same resources is not a safe one. If MySpace wants to avoid legal action as well as negative public opinion in the future, I would recommend that they institute some kind technology in which one's identity must first be proved in order to create a profile; maybe by entering a social security or driver's license number when registering. In any case, MySpace's failure to comment on this case demonstrates their lack of concern for the growing misuse of their services by minors.

Organ Transplant Ends Badly for Four Chicago Residents

Four organ transplant recipients in the Chicago area have been infected with HIV and Hepatitis C after receiving organs from an infected donor. One woman, after having a kidney transplant operation at the University of Chicago Medical Center was told that she had HIV and Hepatitis. Unknown to her, the donor was actually a high-risk gay man and according to CDC guidelines, sexually active gay men are not to be used as donors unless the patient is in an imminent life-threatening situation. Additionally, not only did the hospital not inform the patient of the status of the donor, but they failed to test the patient until another recipient of an organ from the same donor turned up positive for both HIV and hepatitis.

This being the first time since 1986 that HIV was transmitted via organ transplant, all of the area hospitals responsible face serious malpractice litigation. Plus, their reputations are greatly tarnished. Personally I don't know how good I would feel about receiving health care from a so-called professional that infected people with worse illnesses than they were already suffering from. It would be in the hospital's best interest to fire whoever was responsible for the incidents and immediately put into place guidelines and rules that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again. Oh and a public apology wouldn't hurt either.