Congress Passes Pool Safety Bill - why did it take so long?

[question everything]

This law passed after a girl in Minnesota was disemboweled by a pool suction. This was a horrible story


WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress approved legislation Tuesday aimed at strengthening pool safety, six months after a 6-year-old girl was seriously injured by a drain's powerful suction. The legislation would ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of drain covers that don't meet anti-entrapment safety standards. The House approved it as part of an energy bill, following Senate passage last week. President Bush plans to sign it.

On June 29, Abigail Taylor of Edina, Minn., was injured when she sat over an open drain hole in a wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club. This week, she had a transplant operation for a small bowel, liver and pancreas at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, said the family attorney, Bob Bennett. She was listed in serious condition Tuesday. It was thought that Abigail would need a feeding tube for the rest of her life, but the transplants could make that unnecessary, Bennett said.

The legislation, the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act, is named for another victim, the 7-year-old granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker. She drowned at a graduation party in 2002, when the suction from a drain pinned her.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gLKsmU7tYRDGqaI44o1-6FcAi7JAD8TK5RMO3

But yesterday, as I was reading Newsweek cover story about Edwards, I found this note:

It didn't take long for Edwards to earn a reputation as a fearsome courtroom operator. He favored heartbreaking cases in which clients had been injured by unsympathetic corporations—cases that had the potential for enormous payouts. In one case, his client was a 5-year-old girl who had been disemboweled by a faulty swimming-pool drain. The jury awarded her $25 million.

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I wish that Edwards pushed a similar bill when he was a senator (perhaps he tried). Perhaps the lives of other little girls would have been saved.

[T Wolf]

1. Why? Dead little girls do not contribute to campaigns. nt