AT FIRST sight, the conviction of the nurse Colin Norris for murdering four of his elderly women patients by injecting them with insulin can be dismissed as just another of those macabre but random incidents that life throws up. It would be easy to pigeonhole Norris as merely another twisted mind who used the accident of a career in the medical profession to wreak human misery – similar to Dr Harold Shipman, who was convicted of murdering 15 of his mostly elderly patients, though the real total was probably over 200.
But we have to ask ourselves why it seems so comparatively easy for people such as Norris and Shipman to go on killing without suspicion arising earlier. Part of the explanation is that Norris and Shipman preyed on the elderly, and our society is too ready to assume that the death of an older person is probably "natural". Of course, chronically ill people in their late eighties stand a higher risk of natural death than people in their twenties. But there is another hidden social calculation being made: are we not sometimes thinking that the life of the elderly is less important?
No doubt Colin Norris is an aberration, but the lack of dignity we afford our older people in the care system contributes to the ability of such freaks to kill without being discovered quickly. We may never be able to stop the odd psychopath from killing, but we can create a better system of professional care for the elderly that gives them better protection.
(Abridged) SOURCE: scotmannews
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