Did MySpace fake cause Megan’s death?
p2pnet news view | P2P:- Was a fake MySpace responsible for 13-year-old Megan’s Meier’s death?
Or could it have been something else?
Megan hanged herself last year and the popular explanation is she was crushed because of something said by a fake MySpace poster, allegedly created by someone in the Drew family, neighbours of the Meiers.
But, “Widely used antidepressants double the risk of suicidal behavior in young adults, from around three cases per thousand to seven cases per thousand, according to a huge federal analysis of hundreds of clinical trials,” said the Washington Post almost exactly a year ago.
“It marks the first time regulators have acknowledged that the drugs can trigger suicidal behavior among patients older than 18,” it adds.
Two years earlier, ” The Food and Drug Administration releases a long-awaited analysis of the possible risks posed by antidepressants to children and teens,” says NPR.
“The study comes on the heels of a report published earlier this week that showed Prozac can help alleviate depression in adolescents, but also raises the risk of suicidal behaviors.
“The new FDA analysis similarly concludes that young patients taking antidepressants could be at increased risk for self harm.”
The possibility raises interesting implications, not the least for pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Be that as it may, the controversy continues, causing terrible distress not only to the two families immediately involved, but also to thousands of parents online who worry about what happened and why it happened and —- could it happen to their child?
And every day is a new hell for Lori Drew, the Missouri mother who’s at the centre of it all.
She was briefly anonymous. But on November 13, “I fretted about whether to name you,” Sarah Wells (right) posted. “I’m tired of waiting for someone else to out you.”
‘I’m not sure that blog is real’
Another blog which went up on Monday giving a long and detailed account of the Megan tragedy was supposedly written by Lori Drew.
p2pnet re-printed it and, “I’m not sure that blog is real,” said defib in a Reader’s Write, going on, “could possibly be a fake? Troll bait?”
But, “I doubt it,” said a response. “There is too much detail only they would know.”
However, “yup it is a fake blog,” says meth0d, pointing to an MSNBC story which says:
Attorney Jim Briscoe appeared on NBC’s “Today” show, as did the parents of Megan Meier. Megan, a 13-year-old girl from the St. Louis suburb of Dardenne Prairie, hanged herself last year minutes after receiving mean messages on MySpace.
Briscoe said his client “absolutely, 100 percent” had nothing to do with negative, nasty comments posted online about Megan Meier, and wasn’t home when they were sent.
It also says according to Briscoe, Drew, “did not create the MySpace account. She did not instruct anybody to create the MySpace account. She never made any communications through the MySpace account.
“Since the case became public, the woman has had to close her advertising business ‘because people have been attacking her advertisers and they want nothing to do with her. They don’t want the bad publicity,’ he told NBC. He said her friends and neighbors are afraid to talk to her.”
Vertigo says in a Reader’s Write, “jon i doubt the validity of this blog, i really do. no 48 year old woman is going to go on the internet and calling the girl that many people tied the girl’s death to her is going to go off calling her a ‘bitch’ indirectly or directly. look at her answers to the posts ‘pwn’ no real 48 year old woman says that, i mean really. unfortunately the internet gives people to be anonymous for both good and bad reasons and i just think its one of the bad reasons. this is probably perhaps the hydra of effect that has happened with the emily/zoey case in which malware and fake sites began to appear.”
Vertigo is referring to another tragedy in which online nude model Emily Sander /Zoey Zane was murdered.
“We have received multiple public reports of attackers using the recent murder of 18 year old college student Emily Sander (AKA ‘Zoey Zane’ in the adult film industry world) as a lure to install malware,” says Adam Thomas on Sunbelt blog, going on:
The MSNBC story goes on to repeat, or confirm, material much of which has already been widely reported. But it doesn’t say anything about the blog.
Was it written by Drew? It’s articulate and as the poster mentioned above says, there appears to be a lot of authentic detail.
However, against that, it’s entirely conceivable someone who knows both families intimately, and who’s been twisted out of shape by the controversy, dreamed it up to further embarrass and discredit Lori Drew.
Stay tuned.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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December 5th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
There’s too much stupidity involved in this kind of thing for me to talk about it. I’ll surely spin off on a tirade about how people shoving antidepressants down kids’ throats because they’re bored in class isn’t a good idea and how ultimately the responsibility for the death lies with the suicide victim herself and secondarily with her parents for not managing her psychological condition properly. Aww crap, I talked about it.