Thanks to all--medical emergency under control

Tue Jan 7 03:17:39 UTC 1997

> On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
> 
> > Thanks to everyone who responded.  I was eventually able to reach one of
> > the providers, who was able to identify the callers through logs, and
> > passed the information to the local emergency people.  The patient is now
> > under treatment, and did not take a lethal dose.
> 
> I'd just like to point out the similarity between this event and the use
> of the phone company to track down suicide callers. This reminds me of
> several 40's or 50's B&W movies with people running down banks of relays
> looking for the connection. I suspect that as the use of the Internet as a
> communications tool pervades our culture more deeply these events will
> occur with increased frequency.
> 
> This is just one more good reason for every provider to have a 
> 24/7 NOC service even if it just gets call-forwarded to someone
> asleep in bed.

Add to this that this is the second time in 6 months I have heard of a
such an incident where the net was usefull in stopping this.

Reminds me of the time a guy walked into our offices and turned over
the handgun he had been toying around with the night before because
one of our staff convinced him not to use it.