The Angel of Death

There is plenty of vapid speculation going on about the possible motives of Andreas Lubitz. Lots of people are depressed, and people sometimes kill themselves, but it's obviously uncommon to take a lot of other people along for the suicide ride. Not, however, unprecedented. These researchers found 24 cases of "aircraft assisted suicide" in the U.S. from 1993 to 2012. Most of them were private planes and probably were solo ventures; however the story recounts 4 cases of commercial airline pilots deliberately crashing planes and killing passengers. In no, case, however, did they leave behind an explanation. (One pilot survived, and he was clearly psychotic.)A somewhat different, but possibly related case, is that of Harold Shipman, a British general practitioner who is estimated to have murdered 236 of his patients, and likely more, by means of fatal injections of diamorphine, which is the name the British give to prescription heroin, which is a thing there. He was convicted of 15 murders and sentenced to multiple consecutive life sentences. He eventually killed himself in prison. Even though they had him dead to rights, he never confessed and never offered any explanation for his actions.Unlike the murderous airline pilots, self-destruction was evidently not originally on Shipman's agenda. However, though we can only speculate, it is possible that the murder half of the motive was related. Shipman is no the only medical professional who was into murdering patients. Michael Swa...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs