In our greedy world of frivolous lawsuits, there occasionally comes around a case that is too absurd to be won. In the recent jury decision of a 2003 debacle, that is the case.

In 2003, 11-year old Sabrina Johnson lost her vision after an adverse reaction to Children’s Motrin, an ibuprofen-based medication designed specifically for children. Her type of reaction is a supposed one in a million. Johnson says that her reaction was so painful that she was unable to painlessly see light, and ended up spending her first few weeks with her head inside a cardboard box.

Her family sued for $14 million in physical damages (loss of eyesight), $103 million for pain and suffering (approximately $7 million a day in the box), and $950 million in punitive damages (to make the pharmaceutical company pay for their mistake). When added up, the family is suing for over $1 billion dollars. In my opinion, they would have won at a lower price, say $100 million, which would have been more than enough to cover the damages. The jury voted 9-3 in favor of the drug company.

There is no price that can be put on life, which has been argued in these scenario, in abortive rights, and in many other instances. There isn’t a way the family could justify going into the billions of dollars all because their daughter had a bad reaction to a drug. But just for the fun of it, because we already know that losing your eyesight is worth $14 million dollars, I figured it would be fun to rank this price with those of other lost senses, starting at the least.

1. Taste ($2.5 million)
Taste can in some ways cause more problems than it actually does good. In our skinny society, barring interference by a rapidly fast metabolism, most people have to watch what they eat and avoid uncontrollable urges to take in massive quantities of calories – all based on our ability to taste. Sure it is great to bite into a nice apple pie and feel that sweet syrup on your buds, but I would sacrifice those calories and that sensation simply to eat broccoli, salads, or fish each day. Most people need seasonings and dressings to eat the fore-mentioned foods, without the ability you taste – you don’t. I would consider paying for a couple of tasteless months just to watch my figure tone down tremendously. Whereas now I eat somewhat-healthy foods, then, I would be eating only the essential nutrients. I could see it taking off as a new, tasteless diet. That would be perfect – though I believe many would still take in the high calories to see if they can taste anything.

2. Smell ($3 million)
In our world, it doesn’t matter too much if you have olfactory senses or not. Sure pheromones can lead you in the right attractive direction, and it is always nice to breath in the ‘new car smell,’ but on a daily basis I’d reckon more people smell bad things than good. We often smell flatulence and gross food, we smell wet dogs and sweaty clothes, we smell stale food and the horse excrement we somehow stepped in on our walk. Sure it is nice to smell the occasional cologne or to know whether or not you smell awful, but one can artificially do all this by spraying some deodorant on and taking a daily shower. Overall, not that important to our current lives, unlike what it might have been before we became civilized. Oh, and one of our most potent industrialized killers, carbon monoxide poisoning, doesn’t have an odor.

3. Touch excluding pain ($10 million)
This is the first sense on this list that would actually make an impact on our everyday lives. Without the ability to sense our surroundings, we would have terrible blisters on our hands from picking up something hot, we wouldn’t be able to effectively know when we have turned the steering wheel the entire way, and we couldn’t feel one another. We could still perform everyday life functions (we’re thinking realistically, here) but many of our day-to-day activities could be tremendously limited if not for this feeling. Technically we wouldn’t be able to feel the earth beneath us, but I choose not to look that deep into it because that is terribly unrealistic. Plus we could just sit in a wheelchair and do a lot of the same things we would do before, and would have $10 million to pay a butler over the course of a lifetime.

4. Hearing ($11 million)
Hearing and Speech are the primary ways we communicate in this world, and without that ability we are extremely limited in what we are able to do. Though it doesn’t sound bad, pardon the pun, you wouldn’t be able to legally drive because you couldn’t hear other cars or emergency vehicles. And although we have hit the text message generation, you couldn’t with others and would need a scratchpad to perform basic functions. You could be self-sufficient without hearing (as many people are) but it does put a damper on life. Luckily for the deaf, scientists are making great breakthroughs in designing hearing aids; I once watched a Jeff Bridges CBS TV Movie on it.

5. Vision ($14 million)
The price is already there from the article, but of the senses vision is probably one of the most important. It is the primary way we react to the environment. To read The Plateau Times, this is the only sense you need. To learn in school or communicate with friends, this is the only sense you need. If it is gone, the world is gone too and you are stuck lost in an unknown world. Without it you cannot watch TV with subtitles, you cannot see your supposed-Supermodel girlfriend’s cellulite, you cannot see what everybody else can. In the novel 1984, the primary threat is, “Big Brother is Watching You.” Now imagine having a blinded big brother, and how effective it would be at weeding out ThoughtCrime.