Editorials
Tuesday, October 6, 1998

Reviews of children’s
deaths can save lives

CHILDREN are our most precious assets. Their deaths are calamities for their parents. Now Hawaii is joining 38 other states in a systematic effort to determine why children's deaths occurred and what can be done to prevent similar cases.

Authorized by the 1997 Legislature, the Child Death Review System will begin next month to analyze deaths occurring in Hawaii. About 200 children die in the state annually. Loretta Fuddy, chief of maternal and child health in the state Health Department, is the coordinator of the review council. She says half of the deaths are injury related and half are medical conditions, and "We want to understand the deaths that can be prevented."

It's been a decade-long struggle to get the Legislature to act. The problem was a lack of unity, which was solved with the formation of a coalition last year that succeeded in winning action.

The council aims to identify the causes and circumstances surrounding every death and identify risk factors in order to recommend policies to prevent future deaths. The council also seeks to encourage interdisciplinary training and community education on these problems.

One problem area is child abuse. In the last 12 months six fatalities have been linked to suspected abuse. It seems obvious that greater efforts are needed to prevent such tragedies through education and effective action when abuse occurs.

However, no single cause is responsible for children's deaths, and no simple solution exists. The work of the Child Death Review System will be complex, but whatever contributions it can make to reduce the number of deaths will be invaluable.

Australian elections

THE big news about the Australian elections from our point of view was the defeat of the anti-Asian One Nation party. Its controversial leader, Pauline Hanson, had predicted that the party would win 12 to 15 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

As it turned out, Hanson, elected to Parliament as an independent in 1996, lost her own seat. One Nation won no seats in the House and only one in the Senate.

The results amounted to a rejection by the voters of One Nation's exclusionary policies, a throwback to the "white Australia" era. Australia has made dramatic progress toward becoming a multiracial society, and the elections suggested that the people want to proceed in that direction.

In the battle of the major parties for control of the government, the conservative coalition retained power under Prime Minister John Howard but lost ground to the Labor Party, which was ousted two years ago. Incomplete results indicated that Labor had gained at least 17 seats, bringing their numbers in the House to 66, while the conservatives may have been reduced to 71.

Labor's leader, Kim Beazley, told a post-election rally that such a comeback is the biggest since World War II for a party forced out in the previous election. Labor clearly was encouraged by the results although it fell short of regaining power.

Howard will have to fight to get his tax reform plan through the Senate, where his party will not hold a majority. And it's not clear how he can keep his promise to cut income taxes if the economy worsens in the wake of the Asian crisis. Howard's plan to sell off the government's remaining majority share of the national telecommunications giant Telstra Corp. also is unpopular in the Senate. He will have a more difficult time governing with a reduced majority.

School drug testing

AN Indiana school district has taken a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing limited drug testing to the brink of -- if not beyond -- its outer limits, and the high court has nodded in approval. The Supreme Court's refusal to consider objections to widespread random drug testing of high school students could seriously weaken their constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Hawaii's schools would be wise not to follow the Indiana district's example.

In a 6-3 decision in 1995, the Supreme Court explained its willingness to allow random drug urinalysis of Oregon student athletes with the rationale that "school sports are not for the bashful" and that athletes are role models for their classmates.

Rush County High School in Indiana gave an extreme interpretation to the ruling and extended drug testing to all students participating in extracurricular activities. In many of the nation's schools, that encompasses virtually the entire student body.

The Rush County drug-testing program was challenged by parents of three children who belonged to the library club and the Future Farmers of America. Carrying the 1995 high court decision to absurd lengths, a federal appeals court rejected the family's challenge, asserting that "successful extracurricular activities require healthy students."

Allowing random drug testing of public school students applies the doctrine that the school takes the place of parental authority. The students thus have less Fourth Amendment protection than adults or than they might have at home or in another setting. However, that makes random testing of students no less intrusive and objectionable.

The Supreme Court said three years ago that it was applying a balancing test and weighing the students' privacy interests against the interests of the school district. Its refusal to consider the Indiana case, while not setting a legal precedent that can be cited in other cases, could open the schoolhouse door to policies that threaten to strip students of their privacy rights without plausible justification.

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John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

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A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor