http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2011/10...-washington-man-cuts-off-arm-with-guillotine/ Does it make me a bad person if I laughed?
There is just so many aspects to laugh at. Imagine guy working on guillotine stupidly putting his arm through the cutting rail so it could fall on it. One arm man comes running into clinic yelling for help. Cops finding the arm and then the guillotine. Did they have to keep it for evidence?
Why the heck would he have a guillotine anyway? He's homeless with a guillotine. I'd say mental illness played a role.
It's always good to make fun of people with a medical condition, isn't it? Police have already said that a lot of time and effort went into the creation of the guillotine. The man likely suffered from Body Integrity Identity Disorder, which is when you feel like one of your limbs shouldn't be there. People with the disorder will often resort to do it yourself amputation, after which they lead normal, happy lives, and no longer suffer the severe depression which plagued them for years. But yeah. Laugh all you like.
People often do themselves in in exactly this way. When I worked building power plants, falling from the structure was a common way to die or be seriously injured. Were falls from walking around all day on 4 inch wide beams the main cause of falls? Nope. The most common reason for falls (by a slight majority) was the situation of a worker removing some catwalk in order to work underneath it, or to lower a part through it. The scenario involved the worker removing a section of walkway, turn around and set it against the rail, then turn back to put up safety tape to block off the area and then step RIGHT THROUGH THE HOLE HE JUST MADE! What was apparent to us was that when you are working out in a very dangerous place 300 feet in open air, your attention was riveted, but when you were on the catwalk with guard rails, your brain just relaxed and a routine step was your unexpected doom. And yes, if the guy survived, we gave him a hard time, although must of us came close to the same thing at one time or another. It is something to remember about comfortable situations. How many guns were assumed unloaded before they went off?
I know Health and Safety rules can sometimes be a pain in the backside, and can often get complained about (sometimes rightly so), but that strikes me as an obvious example of where they should actually be applied. In my opinion, after that happens once (and certainly if it happens twice - that's no 'freak accident'!), any worker removing a section of walkway like that should be wearing a harness and secured to something solid for the duration of that particular job (and probably also not working on it alone, for safety's sake), to make sure they can't fall. It only takes an instant to make a mistake like that - it's not something that can be called 'serious negligence' (like being stupid enough to walk balancing on the handrail of a walkway or whatever would be!), so it's the kind of scenario where a bit of basic safety precaution (and equipment) would actually be pretty sensible! In the case of the OP, though, it does sound like a mental illness thing - it's very sad that someone can end up in a situation like that without someone realising they need help before they do something stupid to themselves. Nobody in their right mind would be building themselves a guillotine in their camp in the woods, and people who are going that far are probably going to need some help (and/or medication) to overcome what is probably a fairly serious mental condition. There's probably much more to it than simple carelessness or stupidity.
Well said Make. Very well said. Someone who builds a guillotine quite definitely has profound behavioral health issues and it's a pity that he didin't get treatment before this tragedy occured.
