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The Guardian reports that the woman who was accidentally shot dead by her two-year-old son in an Idaho Walmart is described by those who knew her as a gun lover, a motivated academic and a successful nuclear research scientist who worked for Battelle’s Idaho National Laboratory and wrote several papers there including one on using glass ceramic to store nuclear waste (PDF). Rutledge was raised in north-east Idaho and always excelled at school, former high school classmate Kathleen Phelps said, recalling her as “extremely smart. … valedictorian of our class, very motivated and the smartest person I know. … Getting good grades was always very important to her.”
Veronica Rutledge and her husband loved everything about guns. They practiced at shooting ranges. They hunted. And both of them, relatives and friends say, had permits to carry concealed firearms. “They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case,” says Terry Rutledge, her husband’s father. “… I brought my son up around guns, and he has extensive experience shooting it. And Veronica had had hand gun classes; they’re both licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.” Many locals don't discern anything odd with a 29-year-old woman carrying a loaded gun into a Wal-Mart during the holiday season. “It’s pretty common around here,” says Stu Miller. “A lot of people carry loaded guns.” More than 85,000 people, 7 percent of Idaho's population, are licensed to carry concealed weapons (PDF), “In Idaho, we don’t have to worry about a lot of crime and things like that,” says Sheri Sandow. “And to see someone with a gun isn’t bizarre. [Veronica] wasn’t carrying a gun because she felt unsafe. She was carrying a gun because she was raised around guns. This was just a horrible accident.”
(Score: 2) by fnj on Saturday January 03 2015, @03:49AM
These particular individuals ending their lives due to medical issues are not actually "killing themselves". They are choosing the manner and time of their death, which is altogether different. And by extension, choosing not to undergo loss of faculties is much the same. A life which has descended into profound dementia is not really a life at all. I'm not talking about when you forget where your car keys are. I'm talking about you don't have the faintest idea who that person is who says they are your spouse or child.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Magic Oddball on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:46PM
That's the case if their disorder/disease is terminal and they're entering the end-stage where medicine's ability to alleviate suffering tends to fail.
The problem is, that's very rarely the case for suicidal people with serious medical problems. Speaking both from a lot of research and experience**, the vast majority of cases involve a person with traits like these:
-- disability that is likely permanent
-- frequently disabling pain levels that are undertreated
-- currently or recently being abused
-- social isolation
-- very poor with no reason to think it will improve
-- feelings of guilt for needing assistance
Unfortunately, 'normal' people see a major medical condition, and assume it's automatically "logical" to be suicidal -- but when the same patient doesn't have those other factors in place, the depression invariably either is absent or becomes fully treatable. It makes sense, too: if you remove the "disability" line, all of the others are well-known factors for depression in anybody.
If you stop and think about it, it's really saying something that out of all the countries that have considered legalizing euthanasia, none of them had the support of their country's disability rights movement. With very rare exceptions, the people in favor of it have invariably been healthy individuals that assume living with serious medical conditions (including dementia) is a living nightmare, when the people that are actually in that situation (like me) rarely become depressed without the same external causes that affect 'normal' people.
As a side note about dementia: the vast majority of them continue enjoying life and doing as much as they can as long as they're living somewhere that they're well cared-for. A lot of our impression of dementia/Alzheimer's is based on what it looks like when the person has been 'warehoused' in a nursing home with little-to-no interaction aside from family visiting. It's the family that 'suffers' from watching the person change as their memory & cognitive abilities fade; committing suicide when they have their full faculties, though, would mean dying long before the 'good times' would end and traumatizing the hell out of their loved ones anyway.
**I'm the sort of person you likely figure should be "logically" suicidal: internal defects galore [wikipedia.org], a herniated brain [wikipedia.org], and oldschool autism. None of that made me suicidal; what did was suddenly finding myself in constant intolerable body/head pain that were undertreated, social isolation, and being convinced I was a worthless burden on others by my then-boyfriend. Once I got on an antidepressant, dumped his ass, and was given proper pain management, I was OK again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:28PM
> individuals ending their lives... are not actually "killing themselves"
???