For those with a comparatively long memory (long in terms of this culture, anyway), the name “Carol Carr” should ring a bell. In 2002, she shot and killed two of her adult sons as they lay in beds in a Georgia nursing home. Both had Huntington’s Chorea, a hereditary condition that results in a progressive decline in motor and cognitive ability.
Here’s the update from Newsnet14:
The Griffin woman was at the vortex of the issue in 2002 after killing her two gravely ill sons. But asked whether a law should allow assisted suicide, Carr went on a rant about nursing home profits and the inability of dying people’s families to control the end of life.
“They won’t let an animal suffer; they’re put to sleep,” Carr said Friday. “But there’s no money in keeping animals [alive]. It’s all about money. Money. Money.”
Doctors should be allowed to end the life of terminally ill people if that is their wish, she said.
A couple of comments about the blurb from Carr:
- I guess she didn’t get the memo about the cold reality of animal euthanasia and suffering;
- It’s interesting to hear Carr rant about nursing homes. Disability advocates tried to do the same thing when the murder of her sons was being covered:
After June 11, Randy and Andy were increasingly referred to as “terminally ill” rather than disabled.” This, and the lack of attention to problems with the nursing home, seemed to effectively foreclose discussion of these matters. Continuing coverage of the neglect and abuse issue would have allowed people with disabilities to ask why the Scott brother weren’t being allowed to have assistance while living at home. Calling them “terminally ill” rather than “disabled” meant that the issue was no longer pegged as one in which the disability community might legitimately have a say.
That’s what happened when Georgia activist Mark Johnson emailed reporter Jeffrey Scott. Scott replied that he was determined not to let either side in the “mercy killing debate” “hitch a ride” on the story. Johnson, though, continued to press the reporter, pointing out that nursing home abuse and neglect had been important parts of the original story. Scott acknowledged the disability community’s perspective might be appropriate in future coverage of the case — but there were no promises.
Neither the disability community’s perspective nor the history of nursing home abuse and neglect got much air time at all in the stories – right through Carol Carr’s guilty plea to “assisting” the “suicides” of her sons. –Stephen Drake