Finidng a Killer

British Doctor Harold Shipman, a deranged doctor was convicted of a number of murders of his elderly patients. Some suspect the total number killed was near to 300.

The population of the United States is something like five times as many as that of the United Kingdom. Let us suppose that a similar killer is on the loose in the United States. How could we find him?

Presume we had all sorts of modern record-keeping to help us. You would think we could just look for Docs who have an above-average number of deaths of patients (especially of the same sex or race or whatever). That will not work. Many of the very best doctors are sent the very worse patients as a last chance.

A simple statistical survey would give us too many names to be worked through one by one.

Shipman killed older people, their deaths are not overly investigated. He was a doctor, he faked the causes of deaths. Shipman had no real connection to those he murdered (until he forged the will for one of them, almost as if he wanted to get caught).

It is a real puzzler. How could we do it?

Turning to the larger issue. It (seems to me to be) a pretty good bet such a killer is on the loose in the US. A number of less-prolific killer have been found in the medical fields of late. Would it be moral to launch some sort of massive records search to find such people, even if it would mean looking with a jaundiced eye on so many innocent practitioners?

Would it be moral not to?

It’s been done.

NOTICE: Please keep posts to this thread about the GQ raised. Not about the morality issue.
Paul. You should have opened a thread in GD if you wanted to know about the morality part. As a matter of fact, why don’t you do that. Then, if this one gets bogged down in replys about the morality, we can refer them to the other thread.

samclem GQ moderator

Good morning all.

I am surprised this thread has attracted so little attention. It seems to be an interesting topic (to me at least). Certainly there are a large number of medical killers out there. My question is if there is any systematic way of catching them, or would such a method be possible?

Huh??? “Certainly?” “Large number?” :confused:

I’m afraid I’m going to have to give that assertion a big, hearty, “Cite?”

I read your OP, and your reasoning seems to be something like “Well, Shipman got away for it for a long time, so any doctor could, and since there are so many doctors in the US, there must be more Shipmans.”

A brief search shows a very few notorious cases of medical providers killing their patients over the last ten years: The recent Charles Cullen case, Kristen Gilbert in 2001, the case of Dr. Asuncion M. Luyao, and Richard Williams in 1992-1994. I’m sure there are a few more, but the number is definitely low.

I also assume we are talking only about intentional killings and not considering accidental deaths due to errors, or prescribing appropriate pain medication to end-stage patients where the intent of the action is to relieve pain, not to deprive the patient of life.

I’m recently read a book about something similar called “Playing God In The Nursery” by Jeff Lyon. One thing that struck me was his talking about crimes of omission v. crimes of commision regarding medical deaths- omission being not providing a care or treatment, and commission being actively causing death. Certainly a medical serial killer would be under the crimes of commission category (not covered in Lyon’s book). Some of his topic covers how we now have so many technologies to support and extend life that medically now that we don’t really always know when to quit.

Anyway, regarding your OP, I think you are saying that there must certainly be a/some medical serial killers about now and asking would a thorough records check or some other method identify them for prosecution?

Well, I guess if there is someone commiting crimes of commission, the other staff would notice and complain (I believe that is how most are caught). I, for one, would not support an active search for them for three reasons- one, I trust the staff will out a criminal.

Two, that an active search would create a climate of fear that would make it hard to practice medicine when everyone was second guessing everyone elses’ medical decisions and actions (ala the Baby Doe regulations instituted by Reagan in the '80’s where a “hot-line” phone number was installed in nurseries around the country to report irregularities. It cause alot of disruption and found only rarely legitimate problems).

Third, I agree with Lyon the technology makes it hard to die for some. For example, it’s not easy to get off a ventilator once on. Life and death decisions should be made privately between the patient, Dr, and family (in my opinion) only. Dragging strangers, courts, and lawyers into the mix will quite likely make difficult and painful decisions more painful with delays and private issues becoming news and debate forum fodder.