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54 lines
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54 lines
3.5 KiB
SQL
In Cecil Adams' latest column, he tackles the subject of saving pop-can tabs
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to pay for time on kidney dialysis machines. I've omitted the somewhat
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rambling question, but here is the text of Cecil's response:
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. . . So-called redemption rumors have been floating around at least since
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the 1950s and probably earlier. Before kidney dialysis came along you
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typically were told to save cigarette packs to buy somebody time on an iron
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lung -- one of your classic sick bargains.
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Most such stories were false, but not all. For example, from 1948 till
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1979 the makers of Vets Dog Food would make a one- to two-cent donation to an
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outfit that trained seeing-eye dogs for each Vets label redeemed. Today Heinz
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baby food labels can be redeemed to benefit children's hospitals and
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Campbell's soup labels can be used to buy school equipment.
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The kidney dialysis legend may have started with the Betty Crocker coupon
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program run by General Mills. Most folks redeemed the coupons for kitchen
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utensils and stuff, but beginning in 1969 General Mills OK'd several
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fund-raising campaigns in which coupons were used to purchase some 300 kidney
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dialysis machines. The company soon stopped dialysis drives due partly to
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complaints that it was "trading in human misery." But the idea evidently
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survived in the public mind, with one twist: the medium of exchange was somehow
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switched to pop-can pull tabs.
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The story was so persistent that in 1988 the kidney and pop can people
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decided to play along. Today if you walk into a Reynolds Aluminum recycling
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center with a pile of pull tabs and say they're for "kidney dialysis," the
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staff will nod knowingly, exchange winks, and send a donation to the National
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Kidney Foundation. However, the donation will *not* pay for dialysis, because
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there's no need. Medicaid picks up 80 percent of the cost of dialysis and
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state programs and private insurance typically cover the rest. Instead, the
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donation goes to kidney research.
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So saving pull tabs isn't a complete waste of time. But let's make one
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thing clear: *there's nothing special about pull tabs*. You'd save yourself a
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heap o' trouble and make a lot more money if you recycled the whole can. The
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Reynolds and kidney foundation people have tried to get that point across with
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a poster showing a red Ghostbusters-type slash through a cartoon of someone
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trying to detach a pull tab from a can. The headline says, "Keep Tabs on Your
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Cans."
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But the public hasn't gotten the message. Supposedly responsible people
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-- e.g., the honchos at your school -- will organize pull tab collection drives
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without even bothering to get the whole story. Urban legends expert Jan
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Brunvand reports that in 1989 a Minneapolis VFW post organized a pull tab
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collection drive for the local Ronald McDonald House. When Brunvand asked the
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organizers why they didn't tell people to save whole cans, they lamely replied
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that there were "hygiene problems" and that people liked mailing in the tabs,
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even though the postage often exceeded the value of the aluminum. In other
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words, it's not important to *do* good as long as people *feel* good.
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Sometimes I don't think we have enough common sense in this country to fill a
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teacup.
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+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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| David P. Mikkelson Digital Equipment Corporation Culver City, CA USA |
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+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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