Early reports on the death of Dr. Daniel F. Gunther didn’t have any information regarding his reasons for killing himself on September 30. The stories did spend some time talking about the controversy and his role in the “Ashley X” debate, even flirting with the idea that somehow the controversy might have played a role in his death (see end of entry).
It looks like the family of Dr. Gunther wants to put that speculation to rest. Here’s an excerpt from the latest story on Dr. Gunther’s death, in today’s edition of the Seattle Times:
Depression cited in doctor’s suicide
By Carol M. Ostrom, Seattle Times health reporter
Dr. Daniel F. Gunther, a respected physician at Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center whose support for a hysterectomy performed on a 6-year-old disabled girl in order to keep her small became a national controversy, committed suicide last week.
But Gunther’s colleagues and family members said Wednesday they don’t believe his suicide was fueled in any way by the case, in which he was both sharply criticized and graciously praised.
The King County Medical Examiner said Gunther, 49, died by inhaling automobile exhaust at his Seattle home on Sept. 30.
Gunther had experienced periods of depression in the past, said his brother-in-law, Michael Gunther Maher of Fair Oaks, Calif. “The family believes his history of depression is the reason” for his suicide, he said.
The article that comes closest to dancing with the idea that the “Ashley X” controversy might have played a role in Gunther’s actions is the one on MNSBC, titled “Doctor at center of stunting debate kills himself.”
chickscholar, at The Fox in the Henhouse blog, has already written some thoughts on the MSNBC story:
(responding to a quote by Art Caplan in which he says “You just can’t know what leads people to suicide.”)
What would happen if we actually opened up the whole question to discussion, rather than closing it down? If Arthur Caplan had asked simply, “What do we know about suicide?” rather than “You just can’t know what leads people to suicide,” we might actually have given ourselves space to consider how institutions of all kinds (press, bioethics, pediatrics, parenthood, the law) let something crucial escape their deliberative machines. And perhaps we would be able to step outside the tidy institutional structure of the dominant model of bioethics, whose procedures risk framing situations with such linear clarity that all the disturbing ambiguity escapes.
Read the rest of what she has to say here. –Stephen Drake