IT shouldn't take a death.
Surely we can all agree on that. Nobody should have to die for cruelty to stop.
And yet.
And yet it has taken the death of Steven Dymond to persuade ITV to take The Jeremy Kyle Show off the air.
You only needed to stumble upon it for a few moments to see it for what it was - a remorselessly cruel spectacle that cannibalises the pain and suffering for entertainment.
It never ceased to amaze me that a mainstream channel was choosing to broadcast this as daytime TV fare. The baying crowd, the hectoring host, the extreme behaviour, the gaping emotional wounds - they seemed more like the content of the dark web.
People with substance abuse problems, trapped in dysfunctional relationships, harmful patterns of behaviour, dislocated families, mental health problems - yes these are the forgotten and ignored of society.
Unforgivably so.
That was sometimes invoked by those who enjoyed watching the show as justification for their prurient interest in the litany for misery beamed into sitting rooms day after day, week after week, year after year.
They would accuse detractors of snobbery, of not wanting to hear from the authentic working class.
In fact, most people I know were outraged by the poverty porn of which The Jeremy Kyle Show was the most exploitative example.
The working class is not a homogeneous group and that hour-long abomination certainly did not represent it.
And on Mental Health Awareness Week it must be pointed out, nor did it represent those with mental health problems.
The barbaric pantomime was what happens when instead of being supported and treated they are publicly baited and pushed to extremes.
In the right hands could it have been a constructive and informative programme? I don't believe so.
Treatment is a private matter that should take place between a doctor and patient in an atmosphere of trust.
Similarly, the often tragic fallout from family and relationship breakdown is hard enough to navigate when other well-meaning friends and relatives try to get involved, never mind when unqualified strangers are weighing in.
It is 12 years since a Manchester district judge called it "human bear-baiting" during a prosecution after guests had been involved in a violent incident on the show.
And yet still it remained on air.
At the same time former workers were alleging researchers were told to wind up participants with reports of what other guests had said about them before they went on stage, while alcoholics claimed they were plied with drinks before appearing on the show.
And yet still it remained on air.
It is 11 years since Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr's undercover expose which detailed how she met a woman "whose stepson was being booed and jeered on. He had bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, she said. And she'd spent all morning pleading with the producers not to put him on air. They did it anyway."
And yet still it remained on air.
What was particularly appalling was that the host didn't even try to disguise what was going on.
There was none of the amiable jocularity of the originator of the genre Jerry Springer, who would gently tease out the 'outrageous' stories from guests.
While this was arguably more pernicious in its disingenuity, it had the (perhaps dubious) benefit of allowing the guests to feel they were in charge of their own narratives.
Kyle's shtick does not involve even such illusionary collusion. Instead he is the sneering accuser, often refusing even to make eye contact with the person he is humiliating in front of a studio audience howling abuse as viewers at home dipped digestives into their cups of tea.
This was all happening in plain sight. It was happening on our watch. How can this be?
It can be no coincidence the show regularly reached viewing figures of one million.
We live in an increasingly populist age, where if the people want it, it must be right, even when it is plainly very wrong.
It is scandalous that there was no suggestion of its cancellation until Mr Dymond lost his life.
Make no mistake, many, many lives will have been damaged since its first broadcast on July 4 2005.
The only way to not be complicit in such cruelty is to switch it off your screen.
If there is any hope for our humanity, its cancellation will be the coda of a particularly cruel era.
