Every once in a while an editorial catches our eye here at MCNTalk because it captures a certain aspect of the work that we do. This thoughtful New York Times op ed piece by Bruce Marchart does just that — reminds us both of  the human side of the injuries and disabilities we work with every day, and gives us pause to ponder how we view each life, each incident of “lost time” from work.

In Marchart’s past work in Houston he came across — and confesses to a larger fascination with — many industrial accidents.  He contemplates some of the moments of tragedy juxtaposed against the backdrop not just of the recent explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas but also of the terrorist incident at the Boston Marathon, two incidents which resulted in over 200 injuries and multiple deaths.

Marchart muses, “We tend to discount that which is accidental as somehow less tragic, less interesting, less newsworthy than the mayhem of agency. Lives have been ‘lost’ in Texas, but in Boston, by God — lives have been ‘taken.’

“But this distinction means nothing to the victims or, I imagine, to their families. In Boston, in West, whether by sinister design or by accident, whether on a television-ready stage or hidden away in a rural factory, when people are hurt, when lives are lost, the essential human cost shouldn’t be lost on the living.”

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