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Comment by ghobs91 | Hacker News Reader

The cause of death is respiratory failure, not "air pollution". I'm getting real tired of even big names like CBS getting in on this clickbait game.

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That's like saying someone who bleeds out after being shot died of "circulatory failure". Words have meanings and you don't get to redefine things to make yourself feel better. The court ruled that the girl wouldn't be dead if not for years of illegal air pollution. It's a fact.

Both are correct, both are fact, it's up to you to decide which are more important to you.

no reasonable person would agree that it's correct to call a gunshot wound "circulatory failure" because that's not what society has agreed that those words mean. You can decide personally that they mean something different, but you would be wrong. Language is determined socially not personally.

And how does it become the "society" ? It starts from the individual.

yes sure, you could individually start a movement to redefine the meaning of a word, Frindle-style, but here, today, in our society, the words "respiratory failure" do not mean the same thing as "poisoned by air pollution".

Well at least to me, the author and to some society, both are technically fact and both are technically correct.

In this example, though, we are looking for actionable items. But for the pollution, it appears this girl would have not had respiratory failure. Reducing pollution is the actionable item for addressing the respiratory related illness in this story, and thus the focal point. Writing an article about this person and not mentioning pollution, and writing only about respiratoy failure, would have been utterly pointless.

Edit, to add: just because something is true does not make it relevant. It is true that if this woman never would have been born she would not have had respiratory failure caused by pollution and this article never would have been written... but how is stating that helpful?

I'm just pointing out that it is also correct that the girl die from respiratory failure.

I do not claim to know what is the author true intention or whether its helpful or not.

just trolling

No, it's not like at all.

For death by firearm discharge, the coroner would indicate W34, X74, X94, X95, Y35, or Y36 (depending on the reported circumstances: suicide, homocide, legal action, or war). [1] This cause of death is readily determined by the autopsy and reported immediate circumstances.

Changing the cause of death to air pollution rather than asthma (J45) requires lengthy investigation into years of the deceased's lifetime. It would be infeasible to use that as an actual classification.

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An actually comparable (and practically relevant) situation is changing cause of death from lung cancer (C34) to smoking. "Smoking" is not a cause of death recognized by the CDC, WHO, or any other health organization; it's a underlying factor. This is why you'll see statistics on smoking-related deaths.

[1] http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2005...

Right, because everyone knows that smoking is a totally objective, non-manipulated conversation about the simple facts of a straightforward situation.

In both cases, powerful parties have a huge incentive to use semantics to excuse the blame that should rightfully be placed at their feet.

Which is why it's outrageous to use the phrase "respiratory failure" to imply that this is clickbait and not a real issue.

> smoking is a totally objective, non-manipulated conversation

Is this irony?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_Planets

> [..] he is told that his friend has died of "heart failure." It is only later that he realizes that all deaths can be described that way.

Cause of death lists the root cause, so while she may have died from respiratory failure, she had respiratory failure due to air pollution.

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