But who cares that treatment for children is being hindered by repetetive bureacracy, at least it's protecting children, right? Oh, wait... Well, that's just a

But who cares that treatment for children is being hindered by repetetive bureacracy, at least it's protecting children, right? Oh, wait... Well, that's just a stupid implementation. You evidently should only be cleared once for any NHS facility and anyway, screening a paediatrician is not that useful because (a) they don't typically have uncontrolled access to children and (b) if you are a paedophile, putting yourself through med school just to have access to children is really beyond unlikely. I think the fact that there is a media hysteria is blinding people to the actual issue - that's just like saying "PETA is nuts, let's all have battery-farmed chicken". Many people correctly assume that paedophilia is rare (it is). Also, not many people have unsupervised access to children (in fact only childcare workers, educators and priests typically do). So people put two and two together and say "a childcarer who is a paedophile is a very rare event". But that assumes that the chance of being a paedophile and the chance of having access to children are statistically independent events. They are not - as this well publicised case shows: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8284192.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8284192.stm Moreover, the "leverage" of the event is quite high. This is the same problem with plane crashes; they are rare, but when they happen, 300 people die. You would be amazed how many professions in the UK require background checks. Did you know you need a background check to work at the Meteorological Office? And many, many people on HN are working the US on immigrant visas. Frankly if you have been able to get a job without a background check or a drug test or a work permit, you're pretty lucky. How much do you spend on rare event insurance? You read HN so it's a fair bet you earn living from computing, so you'll have particular insurance against losing or damaging your hands, yes? Well losing my hands is just a sub-class of {unable to work for any reason} so no, I don't have specific insurance against that (though for example, more than one famous violinist or pianist does - because their lifetime earning loss is much greater). But when I was pregnant I got screened for cystic fibrosis. That's pretty damn rare. You'd be amazed if you thought about it, how many rare events you insure against. For example, the chance of your house burning down is actually very small. Yet most homeowners have fire insurance.