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Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes and Noble - 10/20
While reading Dr. Goldhaber’s informative, enlightening and empowering book, I was reminded of an incident that occurred when I was a young child. I became fascinated with an old industrial pedestal fan, the kind with the steel blades that moved with the speed of an airplane propeller. It kept the air circulating in my father’s friend’s workshop. The fan didn’t have a cover. The owner, to my delight, would talk into the back of the fan to sound like a robot. I didn’t understand the science behind this at the time and I didn’t care. I only wanted to be a robot too. While he and my father were not paying attention, I went up to the back of the fan to make my voice sound like a robot. Imagine my surprise, when I found a warning label that I thought was what my grandfather called the “funnies.” It was structured like a comic strip with 3-4 panels. At that time, I was obsessed with comic books and the Sunday Funny Papers. I had just begun to learn to read. I tried to read everything, including that warning label. It demonstrated in graphic detail what would happen if someone were stupid enough to stick their hand in the blade of the spinning fan. I pondered this “comic” while making robot noises. The owner of the shop and my father noticed my antics. They rushed to stop me from decapitating myself. The shop owner quickly unplugged the fan, while my father picked me up and looked me over for amputations. No one listened to my protests, namely, that I had no intention of hurting myself. I just wanted to read the comic and be a robot. That was my first encounter with safety labels. It would not be my last. 

My father and his friend made me hyper-cognizant of all the safety labels in life (including mattress tags). I always found them to be obvious and insulting to my intelligence. I felt that the people (I have to face facts, I am not exempt from this idiocy) who injured themselves by doing stupid things that the labels warned against were examples of natural selection at work. While reading Dr. Gerry Goldhaber’s book, Murder, Inc., I realized how vital they really are to honesty and the evolution of modern civilization. Dr. Goldhaber is one of the intellectual entities that runs a team which creates warning labels. Labels that are designed specifically to protect consumers from harm and the industry from pricey and decimating lawsuits.  

The nation’s leading safety warning communications expert, Dr. Gerry Goldhaber, has worked with 100 of the top 500 corporations, 50 of the top 100 law firms, and governmental agencies like the FDA. In Murder, Inc., Dr. Goldhaber explains the importance of protecting American consumers and industry, and the criterion needed to create effective warning labels. He writes, “...we try to: (1) identify the at risk; (2) determine the precise nature of the hazard and its concomitant risk; (3) determine whether codes and/or regulations suggest or require a warning; and finally (4) further determine whether the potential hazard is known or unknown by the typical product user or consumer at the time of use.”

When an industry elicits Dr. Goldhaber’s aid as their ethical and moral compass, his guidance invokes in them practices that are beneficial for the longevity of their business. This seems to be anathema to our current accelerated globalized economic climate of instant gratification and instant profits. Murder, Inc. shows us that time and time again, companies that are honest and forthright about their products by providing sound and helpful instruction to protect their consumers do better in the long term. Companies that knowingly distribute poorly manufactured and dangerous products enact a “reactive economic model,” more concerned about the short term profit motive and reacting after the fact to injuries and deaths. The end results are class act lawsuits that cost more than what it would have cost them to fix their product in the first place. Surprisingly, many companies adopt the “reactive model.” Murder, Inc. explores a variety of companies that implemented both proactive and reactive economic models.

Dr. Goldhaber writes, “In recent years, we have witnessed some terribly disturbing and shockingly blatant examples of corporations attempting to hide—or simply engaging in outright denial of—any knowledge of seriously defective components in their products. It is often only due to scores of horrific incidents resulting in unconscionable numbers of fatalities and injuries that these deceptions come to light in the glare of subsequent media scrutiny.”

With Murder, Inc., his website www.Goldhaber.com and Youtube channel www.GerryonYouTube.com, Dr. Goldhaber, is like a muckraker “from the Progressive era. His work conjures the spirit of muckrakers from America’s past, like Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, a novel that exposed the awful practices of the meat packing industry, and Ida Tarbell, founder of investigative journalism and author of The History of the Standard Oil Company. His work is also reminiscent of more recent muckrakers, like Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Woodward, Greg Palast and Erin Brockovich. Brockovich feels the same, because she wrote a piece of introduction and appreciation in the beginning of Dr. Goldhaber’s book.

Erin Brockovich writes, “...we are able to find out things faster than ever, to sort through information, to become more self-aware, and to protect ourselves better than ever. That is a good thing, but most won’t know how to use that technology for research. This book is a wonderful tool that can help people navigate their way through a plethora of information.”

As muckraker, though, Dr. Goldhaber in Murder, Inc., doesn’t demonize capitalism, or those who are proponents of our capitalistic consumer society. He understands that for the American public to survive and thrive, businesses, consumers and regulatory agencies must exist symbiotically within the system. All three must be held accountable and work together in what Dr. Goldhaber calls the “legs of a Proactive Safety Triad.” Murder, Inc., states that the best way for the triad to work together starts with the manufacturer’s full principled disclosure, consisting of the following ten steps:

1. Warn specifically for hidden hazards not likely to be known by users at the time of purchase or use.
2. Don’t warn for open and obvious hazards that have high awareness among the public.
3. Follow all appropriate warning codes, standards, and regulations.
4. Communicate efficiently without sacrificing needed warnings and safety information.
5. Avoid information overload/obfuscation with clear, succinct, easily understood language.
6. Clearly communicate both the nature of the hazard and the consequences of exposure.
7. Provide appropriate instructional information to avoid the hazard and/or its consequences.
8. Design warnings conspicuously (appropriate size, color(s), signal words, location(s), etc.).
9. Use pictographs to enhance the comprehension of a warning’s written language.
10. Use the best, most appropriate communication channel(s) to deliver the safety message.

While it seems that it would be in the best interest for every company to give full disclosure and use the proactive economic model, Murder, Inc. gives examples of businesses that thought they were too big for failure or thought that they couldn’t afford to recall faulty products. They chose the reactive economic model. 

The most recent example, “The Takata Corporation shipping out millions of potentially explosive, shrapnel-firing airbag modules that have killed 11 people worldwide, to date, and resulted in the largest and broadest automobile recall in history. It has affected at least ten major auto manufacturers and has impacted millions of lives.”

Then, there are the companies that take the high road, like Daikin from Japan, creators of industrial-size AC units. A manufacturer with over “15 billion in annual sales and operating in 140 countries. They also hold the distinction, to the best of my knowledge, of having never been sued in the United States for failure to warn about the potential hazards of their products …. this company’s approach to the issue of principled disclosure that has enabled it to remain lawsuit-free. Their story reveals how the process works well when it is done right.”

Murder, Inc. also discusses government regulatory agencies like, but not limited to, the EPA and the FDA. According to Dr. Goldhaber, our governmental regulatory agencies fall short at the protection that they are supposed to provide consumers. Large amounts of money from lobbyists of big businesses have caused our current administration to roll back and lessen regulations and protective elements within manufacturing that impact our food, environment, pharmaceutical drugs, etc. It seems that it is only going to get worse, to the point where America’s citizenry’s health and well-being suffers. Again, the short term immediate profits reactive economic model is implemented, at the expense of the future.

Easily accessible to readers and with a keen sense of humor, using pop culture references like Monty Python to reiterate and illustrate points, Murder, Inc. shows us how principled discourse and accountability shared between industry, consumers, and governmental regulatory agencies can ensure properly functioning products that are safe for public consumption. It also shows us how shared accountability is for the betterment of everyone worldwide.

Lee A. Gooden


MBR BOOKWATCH - 6/20
"Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It" is impressively informative and a critically important, unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library Contemporary Social Issues collections. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of students, academia, social/political activists, corporate executives, governmental policy makers, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It" is also readily available in a paperback edition (9781946384799, $24.95) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.95).
 
Editorial Note: Over the past 42 years, Dr. Gerry Goldhaber has emerged as the nation's leading safety warnings and communication expert. His clients have included over 100 of the top 500 corporations in the U.S. and 50 of the top 100 law firms and government agencies, including the FDA, CPSC, and the DOD. He has appeared on national TV and given international keynote addresses. Gerry frequently gives depositions for court cases nationwide. For the past 11 years, he has published the Goldhaber Warnings Report, which reaches over 10,000 litigators nationwide. Born in Brookline, MA, today he lives in Manhattan where he trains for a triathlon, volunteers at the Synagogue, and spends time with his son and daughter. He maintains a web site at www.murderincbook.com."
 
– Michael Dunford, Reviewer

KIRKUS REVIEWS - 3/11/20
"Goldhaber shows how corporate profitability has often won out over safety and why regulating manufacturers can be challenging...Based on solid research and Goldhaber’s experience in the field, and introduced by the activist Erin Brockovich, this book by the author of Organizational Communication (1989) is a solid choice for both casual readers and those with a passion for safety. A safety expert’s engaging and well-written guide to hazards at home, at work, and elsewhere."

— Kirkus Reviews

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AS PDF  |  READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE
CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER- 2/27/20 & 3/10/20
"Goldhaber examines the outcomes when corporate profits trump public safety. He uncovers the history of government regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect us, but instead appoint leaders who come and go from the same industries they’re tasked to regulate."

– Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime Reporter

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AS PDF  |  READ FULL ARTICLE ONLINE
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And remember, the more informed you are, the safer you will be.
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