Rough Draft

NOTE: So this is still pretty raw, I added some notes on ideas of where I wanted to go. Any feedback is very much appreciated!


What is the “human factor”? In my opinion, it’s human stupidity. Charles Darwin was the one who coined the phrase, “survival of the fittest”, meaning that not only the strong but the smart thrive and drive a species. In both Kim Vicente’s and Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, the “human factor” is important.
In Kim Vicente’s “The Human Factor” she stresses the danger of human error in technology. She uses the famous nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl as her main argument. She argues that if the test done that night were left in the hands of highly experienced professionals instead of the 3rd shift technicians then maybe thousands of people could have been spared a radiation shower and years of medical trouble. She also comments on the “human factor” in the medical industry, she says, “The bombshell was that human error in medicine was conservatively estimated to account for between 44,000 and 98,000 preventable hospital deaths annually in the United States alone” (19).Vicente tells us that these flaws should be stopped and if we don’t our mistakes could be the end of us. I agree with Vicente that these mishaps are tragic and avoidable. But I can’t help feeling that Vicente is somewhat naive in her argument. When talking about the preventable deaths in medicine she comments on one that involves an over worked medical resident and a mistake that killed a patient, “An investigation revealed that an adverse reaction between the two medications was the cause of death” (22). After she comments about how after that limits were put on the hours medical residents could work but many of those laws were ignored by hospitals. Though it’s horrible I just don’t see the news in these mistakes. Human beings have been making bad decisions for centuries and will continue till the day we become extinct. I just don’t see how technology changes this fact. The numbers of human error and their effect on the populous are alarming and disturbing, but they don’t surprise me. If I’ve learned anything in my almost nineteen years on earth it’s this; the majority of the population isn’t very smart. I’m sure Vicente is aware of this fact, but I still can’t help but get the feeling that she expects us to live in some perfect world where mistakes aren’t made.
When talking about the “human factor” I definitely prefer Kurt Vonnegut over Vicente. The way he portrays human stupidity in smart people is what makes him a great writer. A mad scientist creates apocalypse in a bottle for kicks and leaves it to his socially challenged, emotionally damaged kids. The thing I like the most about this is that he doesn’t rely on the threat of technology to tell his story; it’s all about the human element. (So I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to say here, I have some ideas about using the other scientist as Vonnegut’s defense of technology and research but I’m not entirely sure where I want to go with it)