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Comment by Cycl0ps | Hacker News Reader

>The harmful products identified by the researchers included interactive baby dolls being sold on eBay that contained a restricted chemical, and a remote control helicopter on Amazon that broke easily, exposing button cell batteries that are extremely dangerous when swallowed.

Oh the horror... Cheap helicopters and batteries. Of course this danger is no doubt reflected in several fold increase in child mortality [0], won't somone think of the children!

>Its campaign is being fronted by Sam McCarthy, the mother of three-year-old Rebecca, who almost died after swallowing brightly coloured magnets bought from a third-party seller on eBay that she mistook for sweets.

Who gave young Rebecca an eBay account? Completely irresponsible, she couldn't know what she was bidding on! Thank God this responsible mother here is around to warn us of the dangers.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041714/united-kingdom-a...

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> Who gave young Rebecca an eBay account? Completely irresponsible, she couldn't know what she was bidding on! Thank God this responsible mother here is around to warn us of the dangers.

So her kid accidentally eats some magnets and dies and this makes her a valid source of mockery?

I guess I am seeing the side of HN that people complain about

This is in a reply to the dead child comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28776005

>> So her kid accidentally eats some magnets and dies and this makes her a valid source of mockery?

> Her kid was given magnets and almost died, that makes it a valid source of mockery

No, but thinking that reveals certain repulsive personality traits.

It also sounds like Rebecca's mom didn't "give" her magnets:

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2021-10-06/mum-calls-for-new...

> "I said do whatever you need to do, just save my baby, save her. All I did was buy a toy, that is all I did, I didn't feed my baby magnets, I didn't leave her unattended with them." ...

> The magnets Sam bought online for her son last Christmas.

Well, yes. I mean, it's a very shitty thing to happen, but how the fuck is the seller to blame here?

Mockery is needlessly cruel, but there's a valid underlying point: the ball magnets are an item intended for adults and teenagers, not young children. When I searched on Ebay for "colored ball magnets", I found what looks to be the same item, and it says "adult" in the title twice.

One could argue that hazardous items should be forbidden from having an appearance attractive to young children, but that's hard to implement in practice. I'm inclined to think a warning on the package that they're not for kids and swallowing can be deadly is an appropriate solution for a product like that. DigitDots brand magnetic balls do have such a warning, but I'm not sure if that's true for the white label version I found on Ebay.

This is honestly just normal HN whenever people talk about doing literally anything to push people to get the covid vaccine or trying to stop people from falling down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Apparently people dying is totally fine as long as there is there's some contrived narrative that it's their own fault.

HN, and more broadly the liberal-tarian crowd, is really really individualist which comes through in issues like these.

"We can't make a rule that toys meant for and sold to children should have to meet basic safety standards, it should be the individual parent's responsibility... rabble rabble something education"

"almost dies". Still kinda crass to make fun, but the child recovered.

Swallowed coin cells can lead to life threatening situations in children. It occurs frequently.

https://www.poison.org/articles/button-batteries

322 cases in about 50 years. 69 fatal. That's in the US, but compare to UK birthrates which has seen over 25'000'000 births in that time. These deaths aren't prevented by regulation, they're prevented by parenting

> During the 18.25-year study period, 8648 battery ingestion cases were reported to the NBIH, including 8161 button batteries and 487 cylindrical cell ingestions (eg, AA, AAA). Cases were reported from the United States (97.1%) and 47 other countries.

> they're prevented by parenting

assisted by sensible legislation and product design.

Many small rivers make a lake.

It doesn't say that Rebecca bought them, FYI.

I think they were being sarcastic. Implied that parents should take responsibility.

If you're going to bring sarcasm in, you need to be prepared for someone to respond in a deadpan.

They were

Responsibility? The horror!

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot lately, and it's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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