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| Categories: Diabetes in everyday life |
| Diabetes in everyday life | |
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Insulin is a hormone of vital importance. About the significance of insulin besides being a vital hormone we seldom hear. What I am aiming at is the topic of diabetes and crime.
Murder per Insulin.
There have been cases, mostly involving old patients, who suddenly suffered from heavy hypoglycaemia although they were not treated with an insulin therapy. In most of the cases the patients could be saved by emergency doctors. Often the hypoglycaemia lasted so long that natural causes (e.g.: not enough food) seemed improbable. This cases became even more suspect when hypoglycaemia occurred only after the visits of a certain nursing person. But even professional nurses confessed in some cases that they made misdiagnoses and thought a hypoglycaemic death as "blessing". Therefore they did not take any measures against the hypoglycaemia.
In one case an emergency doctor refused to treat the hypoglycaemia and the stationary hospitalisation which was conducted by a colleague later because the patient did not die after several hours. Investigations had been made in all cases after a C peptide analysis had been applied. C peptide has a long durability in the blood and therefore helps to ascertain the past insulin level.
What do the doctors say?
Prof. Dr. Naworath says that every murder committed by nurses or relatives is a murder too much. The patients themselves seldom are the perpetrators. "Diabetics usually use other forms of suicide rather than an overdose of insulin." Often doctors are not sensitised enough concerning this topic. They do not think of criminal causes when diagnosing death due to hypoglycaemia.
And this too is our conclusion: What is most important is that under such circumstances a murder should not be excluded.
Diabetics in jail
Diabetics in jail can firstly be divided into two groups: There can be a significant difference whether diabetes has been detected before the conviction or in jail.
If it has been diagnosed in jail the only possibility of treatment is the jail hospital where there might be no diabetes specialists. Also the training on dealing with this illness is not always as adequate as it could be. The insulin pen although seen as a weapon can be taken into the cell. This special permission allows the delinquent to inject and measure by himself. What still is forbidden are insulin pumps because the tube of the catheter might be misused.
A second distinction between diabetics in prison is made concerning their diabetes type. Type 2 diabetics generally feel better cared for than type 1 diabetics. There seem to be problems in providing for those patients in many prisons. Most of all, the risk of hypoglycaemia combined with the lacking knowledge of the ward staff can be an enormous danger and can have fatal consequences.
Source partly from: Subkutan 5/2004
Translated by Jella Eifler
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