Legal? Ethical? Who knows.

In my opinion the problem with this situation is not who should be blamed for the tragedy. Obviously the loss of a life is horrible but I don’t think anyone needs to be blamed for it. The medical student’s intent for his article was to help elderly citizens make a difficult decision, not assist a teenager in suicide. The weblog cannot be to be blame because a blog is supposed to be a way for individuals to express their opinions and should not be monitored by the blog.  Blaming the teenager would also be unreasonable because teenagers are some of the most unstable and irrational people. If the teenager was predisposed to committing suicide than I doubt the medical student’s article did anything to advance that decision. If anything I would place the most blame on the parents of the teenager. This story does not give enough information regarding how informed the parents were of how emotionally unstable their child was. If the parents had a vast knowledge of how ill their child was then they should have sought help for him/her immediately. This help may have included restricting his/her internet access, I am no expert on dealing with emotionally unstable teens but it would seem that not allowing them access to a page talking about suicide would be valid. I would never charge a parent who has lost a child as being negligent or even bad parents unless the circumstances directly pointed to that, which doesn’t seem to be the case in this situation.

            I don’t feel it is necessary to charge anyone with a crime in this situation, however if the parents felt that someone was at fault then it would not be ridiculous for them to charge someone since they are in such an unfortunate and probably emotional state.

Addressing the ethics of the medical student’s blog post in another situation entirely from the criminal aspects of this case. Again, I don’t claim to be an ethics expert but perhaps the student should have thought a little more about who could access his blog. The medical students should have understood that the world is filled with unstable people who are considering suicide, in fact the Nation Institute of Mental Health estimates that “26.2%”[1] of Americans suffer from some sort of mental illness. I don’t wish to make any statements about the ethics of the student, he surely regrets that the information he provided was used in the suicide of a teenager. The student was attempting to provide a service to a certain group and the information unfortunately fell into the dangerous hands of an unstable teen. We cannot fault the student for his intent, his execution could have been better.

The tragedy does not require that someone get blamed. Instead we all need to understand that there are sick people in the world and that anything that is posted to the internet can be accessed by these people. Everyone involved in the case probably feels some sort of responsibility for the suicide, whether it be the student, the weblog, or the parents, but no one can be, or should be fully blamed. I would hope a real court would find something similar. My view is that it is extremely unfortunate that there is some belief in our country that when a tragedy like this one occurs that someone is financially responsible and the first choice is to go to court and have the court decide who’s fault it is. A better view would be to reflect on how we can ensure that this doesn’t happen again or at least happens less frequently. 

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[1] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml#Intro