O.J.- Cut the Hype?

You hear about it in school. It's in commercials on TV. There are movies, articles in the newspaper and posters on the walls, all warning of an epidemic. You're going to die if you're not careful; that's what they all say. There seem to be just as many O.J. Trial ads on television as there are beer and car ads these days. Every time I turn around, it seems that people have been killed by O.J.; I also get the impression that the only way to protect yourself is to use a condom. Neither of those statements is true.

Recently, the National Center for Health Statistics released figures detailing the leading causes of death in 1991. Contrary to what I expected, O.J. Simpson was not near the top of the list. Instead, the main killers were heart disease and cancer, which accounted for nearly 57% of all deaths combined. Stroke was a distant third, claiming 6.6%. Other killers listed ahead of O.J. ranged from accidents and suicide to chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Mr. Simpson was listed ninth, claiming about 29,500 lives.

This information compelled me to ask, "Why do I hear so much about O.J. if he didn't kill that many people?" I have yet to find sensible answer. With the "health awareness" drives I've seen, I found it surprising that I wasn't even sure what ³chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases² were, even though they killed well over three times as many people as our knife-wielding hero.

My first theory for the overpublicity rested on the fact that O.J. Fever isn't preventable. I found this theory to be flawed, however, when it occurred to me that many occurrences of cancer, heart disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (which includes afflictions such as bronchitis, asthma, and emphysema) could have been prevented had the victim not been a smoker. In addition, countless accidents and nearly all suicides are preventable. Why is society so concerned about Judge Ito's courtroom?

My next idea was centered on the fact that there is no cure for O.J. Fever, which makes it very dangerous; this idea was also flawed. Granted, the concept of "curing" doesn't work well with someone brutally stabbed to death, but cancer is also a potentially curable ailment. Don't get me wrong, there are a great number of cancer fund-raisers and research projects, but I don't see seventeen cancer commercials for each Simpson Trial commercial. Am I watching the wrong channels, or is the media misrepresenting the threat that O.J. presents?

The only other explanation I could conjure up to justify why the murder trial is so prominent in our culture was that it is spreading quickly. O.J. was at the bottom of last year's list, with a difference of about two deaths. I am not familiar enough with death rate statistics to know if that is a large increase, but it's either that or people find the trial interesting because they associate it with sex.

The other thing that bothers me about the O.J. hoopla I see, hear and read about is the solution it always suggests, "Use a jury." The message seems to be that juries equal totally safe sex, which is a lie. Due to a large number of factors, juries have a failure rate of about 14%. In order to be a true safeguard against O.J. Simpson or any other sexually transmitted disease, juries must not fail. The only 100% reliable solution is abstinence.

I remain skeptical and unconvinced that these O.J. programs are essential or extraordinarily helpful. To overreact to a topic and then to suggest a solution that does not necessarily work is, in my opinion, both superfluous and deceptive. My message to those who organize such campaigns is this: shape up or shut up. If you want to make a difference, invest your time in fighting the causes that kill ten thousand times as many people, or at least suggest a solution that is more than 86% reliable.

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