Sometimes it is easy to forget exactly
what it is we do for a living. Not so much the aspect that people’s well-being
depends on us getting the answer right, but what we actually do. What we test. And
where it comes from.
Many years ago one of the young ladies
with whom I went to college died of a brain tumour. A rather obscure one which
accounts for less than one per cent of all types of brain tumours. And three of
the people she worked with at the time died of exactly the same sort of tumour.
Nothing was ever proved – things were
different back then. When asking for a pencil sharpener in my first place of
work I was given a scalpel.
When I first started I was advised to
take out the works pension but the chap advising me to do so openly admitted
that he did so because he was under orders to do so. He implied a pension was a
waste of money and claimed that (at that time) the average person doing
the job died three years before collecting their pension from something nasty
they contracted doing the job.
Was he right? I’ve never fact-checked
what he said. But this brings today’s missive from the nice
people at Lablogatory into focus. Don’t roll your eyes at health and
safety. It’s important.
