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I saw this when I loged onto AOL this morning, and I was intrigued. Apparently, Britian's Harold Shipman, aka 'Dr. Death', was found hung this morning in his jail cell, in an apparent suicide. I'm sure that there are more in depth articles about this, so I'm going to look for more...
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I found this article on CNN.com, which says that the prision that Shipman died in is conducting an inquiry into his death.
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I remember reading about this guy when he was tried a couple years ago. He would just off little old ladies. I'm not entirely sure if he believed he was doing them a favor, but it certainly wasn't according to their wishes or consent. So not a lot like Kevorkian, though I don't agree that either of them was given power over life and death with their M.D.
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When I hear "Dr. Death" I think of this guy in Texas who was called in as an expert to evaluate if a criminal accused of murder was sane or insane at the time of the killing (and thus would or would not get the death penalty). He appeared in 40-some cases and declared "sane" in every single one, causing each person to be executed.
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Most convicted medical serial killers have been nurses rather than doctors. The latest case in the US occurred with arrest last month of Charles Cullen in the death of a priest in his care. Cullen claims to have killed as many as 40 people during his career as a nurse.
Unfortunately, there were a great many stories about Cullen that ran headlines suggesting repeated killings of ill people might be "mercy." I'd think it would be pretty obvious that someone admitting to the deaths of 40 people is motivated by something other than compassion.
One good article did come out during the coverage of Cullen - and the coverage is still playing out.
quote: What goes on in the minds of medical professionals who become serial killers?
Forensic experts are trying to answer that question in the wake of the arrest of Charles Cullen, the New Jersey nurse who says he killed as many as 40 patients. He has been charged with murder in the death of one patient, and investigators are now looking into deaths at 10 Pennsylvania and New Jersey hospitals where Cullen worked.
Since 1974, nearly four dozen nurses, therapists and doctors have been prosecuted for serial killings in the U.S. and other countries. The phenomenon is either becoming more common, or being detected more frequently.
Yet unlike sexual predators who become serial killers, caregiver-executioners do not seem to have a characteristic psychological profile, family background, or pattern of experiences.
What they do have in common is a pathological self-centeredness, says Beatrice Crofts Yorker, a lawyer and nurse who has studied dozens of cases.
I think this is a good starting point in trying to understand people like Dr. Harold Shipman.
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Hobbes, when you say something like that and you have that smilie right below it, it gets very misleading.
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I guess I just assume that people are used to it by now. Besides which, after having tousands upon thousands of consecutive posts that end that way I'm not about to change now.
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Just remembered there's another MD out there with the nickname of "Dr. Death." (He has even introduced himself this way at least once)
Ronald Cranford is a neurologist in Minnesota who has been an expert witness in many cases involving legal battles over removal of tube-feeding. Cranford always appears as a witness for the parties arguing for ending the person's life. The cases aren't limited to people in vegetative state, either - he's been involved in at least two cases in which he advocated starvation and dehydration of conscious, brain-damaged individuals.
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What is most worrisome about the Cullen case was his ability to get rehired.
He'd work at a hospital. Hospital would notice an drastic increase in mortality in people under his care. They would fire him, but when the next hospital called to check his references, the first hospital would not say anything bad about him.
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Unfortunately, that's not unheard of in these cases. Here's some material - a lot from a leaflet I composed over two years ago - about a couple other medical serial killers.
quote: Indiana State Police believe Orville Lynn Majors killed as many as 100 people where he was suspended under suspicion of giving unauthorized injections. In April, 1995, state police began investigating 165 deaths that occurred at the Vermillion County Hospital from May, 1993, to March, 1995. The hospital failed to report the dramatic rise in its death rate, as required by Indiana state law. Majors worked – and presumably killed – for many months after the staff recognized there was a killer in the hospital and were pretty sure who he was. Only anonymous phone calls by staff to state authorities brought the killing to an end. Major was charged and ultimately convicted in the murders of 6 people out of the hundred he is suspected of killing.
I had the opportunity to interview the prosecutor in Vermillion county with a colleague of mine. According to the prosecutor, the jury at the Majors trial felt that several hospital administrators should have been charged with crimes due to their failure to obey state law. The reason they didn't prosecute was economic - prosecuting these cases is expensive. In fact, it's doubtful they would have been able to afford to do the investigation that led to the conviction without a grant from the state.
Then there's this...
quote:· In spite of his 1985 conviction in the non-fatal poisoning of several coworkers, Michael Swango found work as a doctor in Illinois, Virginia, South Dakota, New York, and Zimbabwe. He was also discharged as a medical resident from an Ohio program due to their suspicions in the death of a patient under his care – but was given glowing reference letters by administrators there. Suspected of killing as many as 60 people or more, Swango pleaded guilty to the murder of 3 patients in New York in a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty.
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