Monday, August 23, 2010

"A textbook suicide"

I'm sure I can't be the first person to have noticed this, but there is something pretty crass in phrasing the death of Dr David Kelly as a "textbook suicide". Regardless or not whether you think he was murdered or whether he took his own life, to relate the death of a man to something in a textbook is pretty heartless. Perhaps there is such a thing as a textbook suicide; however, it seems the decent thing to is not to mention the textbook element to it. I mean, it would be in pretty poor taste if an oncologist said to you "well, your cancer is terminal but on the plus side at least it is textbook". Or perhaps to have a detective saying to a grieving parent "your child was raped and murdered by a stranger, but take heart - it is a textbook child sex murder."

Then again, nothing about the death of Dr David Kelly has particularly shown the state or its representatives to be anything other than, at best, crass and insensitive.

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5 Comments:

At 11:23 am , Blogger brian in the tamar valley said...

Good, thought provoking post!

 
At 1:54 pm , Anonymous Anonymous said...

A good sign the someone is getting really rattled.

 
At 2:16 pm , Blogger TonyF said...

I knew I tried to do it wrong. Wher's this here text book for next time then?

 
At 5:02 pm , Blogger The Nameless Libertarian said...

TonyF,

No doubt someone in the security services is writing it as I type.

TNL

 
At 5:18 pm , Blogger Sean O'Hare said...

The job of a pathologist is to determine the cause of death. It is not in a pathologist's remit to speculate whether it was nautural, accidental, suicide or homicide. That is to be determined by a coroner at an inquest.

 

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