No-Fault Deaths?

I've heard of "no-fault car insurance" but perhaps "no-fault obits" should be next: The Washington Post ran an obituary on Friday for the social and media critic Catherine Seipp that said the 49-year-old blogger "died of non-smokers' lung cancer March 21 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles." Now I've heard of mesothelioma -- the lung cancer that comes from longtime exposure to asbestos -- but "non-smokers' lung cancer" is a first. Let's be honest about here: It's a not-too-subtle way of saying if she had been a smoker then she would have deserved to die.

Even I -- an ardent anti-smoking crusader who tends to wish death on all smokers as a way to get them to stop blowing smoke in my face on the sidewalks -- can see how wrong this attempt to judge a person in death is. I mean, what's next? "Joe Blow died of non-anal-sex-induced AIDS?" "Suzy Jones died of diabetes, but she wasn't fat." Or, "John Smith died of a heart attack, but his blood pressure and cholesterol level were completely within the normal range."

I realize that there is a certain curiosity about people's cause of death, but this seems to be an awfully slippery slope, one that we as journalists need to really think through before we go any further. (WP)