40 Years After an Acid Attack, a Life Well Lived

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/nyregion/40-years-after-an-acid-attack-a-life-well-lived.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all

by Byliner • 13 years ago

148 56 13 years ago

AlexMuir• 13 years ago

A brilliant story, well written.

There have been a few horrific stories of cultural backwards attacking women with acid in the UK press. It's made me far more cautious when handling automotive batteries.

I won't move a car battery ever again without wearing safety goggles.

praptak• 13 years ago

Acids are dangerous indeed. In case of hydrochloric acid you don't even need to splash yourself to get hurt. The fumes are enough to damage your eyes or respiratory tract - gaseous hydrogen chloride dissolves in the moisture covering eyes and mucous membranes, producing hydrochloric acid.

pyre5• 13 years ago

To be fair, I remember handling HCl in chemistry and the fumes didn't dissolve my eyes, though I could tell that the fumes weren't nice either. It would depend on the concentration of the gas, which would also be a function of the concentration of the HCl that was vaporising.

localhost• 13 years ago

HCl is not particularly dangerous, as it is fairly easily washed off. Concentrated sulfuric acid, on the other hand is particularly bad. It is very viscous, extremely difficult to wash off as water just heats up the stuff. See: http://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/22350.htm

chime• 13 years ago

> But he said hers were wasted words.

> “That’s so fascinating,” he said, “but you know, it wouldn’t have made a difference. I was a cautious kid. I knew who was outside the gate. I knew Bassy. You would have opened it, too.”

I can't imagine the trust issues one would have after going through this. If a stranger does something, it can be explained away. But if it is someone you know, makes it much more difficult.

d0vs• 13 years ago

What does this have to do with Hacker News?

sunils34• 13 years ago

By HN guidelines, things that are appropriate are "Anything that good hackers would find interesting... anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

This is the story of Dr. Joshua Miele who, after this horrific attack, has been working on some really interesting projects using technology to make the lives of those living with disabilities better.

After reading this story, I found an interview he did describing some of the projects he's been working on, including tactile maps on smartphones to help blind people navigate their world. http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201106171000.

So I'd say it's relevant.

gnosis3• 13 years ago

From HN's Guidelines[1]:

"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dschobel• 13 years ago

How hard would it be for HN to filter posts like this? There are only so many permutations of "Why is this here? / What does this have to do with HN?" possible...

gnosis3• 13 years ago

To my knowledge, HN hasn't added any new features in years. I think the people who run this site are pretty happy with it the way it is and don't want to change it, despite many suggestions for improvements. So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to do anything about it.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

There are very many add ons and extensions and things available for HN.

There's bound to be a thread filtering add on for whatever browser you're using.

eshvk• 13 years ago

First off, to the person who submitted this article, thank you!

Next. Sometimes people work in technology are interested in how the world works, about beautiful things, about life and how it interacts with the rest of the world. Yes, sometimes we also have this feeling that things that strike and inspire us and stimulate our intellect might be of interest to others. I come here not for the technical articles. I work in this field and those will inevitably float through to me. I come here because I wish to read and savor the thoughts of incredibly amazing people. It is discourteous to decide explicitly how this community will evolve. If you or anyone really feels that there is no place here for humanity, art and articles on culture, you can very well flag the article. If it looks like that is happening enough. Those of us who enjoy such things will find another home to continue this journey.

guana• 13 years ago

Here's your answer: someone submitted it and people upvoted it

GuiA• 13 years ago

I'm certain I've seen Dr. Miele in the BART before.

Everyone (myself included, which I am ashamed of) did everything to not stare at him nor look in his direction– which of course would have been glaringly and awkwardly obvious to anyone observing the scene.

Reading this article, his body of work is fascinating. Part of me hopes that if I ever see him again during one of my commutes, I'll have the courage to go up to him and ask him questions about all the cool stuff he's done.

Mz6• 13 years ago

I wonder how aware he was of it and how much he experienced it as socially isolating. When I saw "Shallow Hal," the beautiful thin actress who wore a fat suit for the role of the fat girlfriend tried it out by going to a bar. She was used to being looked at. No one looked at her when she was the fat girl. She remarked in an interview how socially isolating it was. I know he is blind but he is not stupid. I wonder how much of that he notices.

joshschreuder• 13 years ago

But a thin girl in a fat costume knows what it's like to be thin and socially active. It makes it more jarring to go from one extreme to the other (as it would be for an overweight person who was ignored to suddenly become the centre of attention).

By that same token, I don't know if Dr. Miele would notice much of it, because he has been isolated in public from such a young age.

pinaceae• 13 years ago

interesting as this again was done by a deeply disturbed individual, a paranoid schizophrenic.

society since then has not gotten better at identifying threats coming from sick people. down to sandy hook, the completely insane individual is left alone until he/she commits an atrocity.

blinkingled• 13 years ago

>society since then has not gotten better at identifying threats

The other end of it is society starting to aggressively label and segregate people as "threats". Everyone would have to fit this set of behavior somebody else defined or else they get labeled as threats.

k-mcgrady3• 13 years ago

I have no specific evidence but I believe society has gotten better and identifying mental health issues and treating them.

>> "down to sandy hook, the completely insane individual is left alone until he/she commits an atrocity"

It's up to family and friends to help identify problems someone they know might be having and it's up to the government to provide adequate support and facilities to treat ill people. People being left alone with their problems until they crack is not just due to people not identifying the problems, it's due to inadequate care options.

specialist3• 13 years ago

Based on my recent personal experience, I don't feel that much has improved. Perhaps society is more accepting of the condition, and less likely to stigmatized. But helping a mentally ill person (in the USA) is pretty much not an option. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough.

ufmace• 13 years ago

Reminds me of this article I read after Sandy Hook:

http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unth...

It seems that, every time some mentally ill person does something like this, whether it's a big, splashy mass shooting or bombing or something smaller like this acid attack, you later find out that everybody around that person had known for a long time that they were uncontrollably and irrationally violent at times, but nobody could think of anything to do about it. Just like that article - the boy's own mother is pretty sure that he's going to do something horribly violent someday, but nobody has any idea what to do about him, besides getting him thrown in jail.

I suppose it's a hard problem, if you really think about it. Exactly what should the threshold be for having somebody involuntarily committed to some sort of mental hospital or something, and kept there against their will for their entire life, or until some doctor thinks they're safe again? As I understand it, it was fairly low back in the early 20th century, which led to lots of people being committed, some for various versions of being unpopular or eccentric, into mental hospitals that were real horror-shows. What we have now is the backlash against that, which might be too far in the other direction, where it's almost impossible to get someone committed like that until they commit a serious violent crime.

Where's the happy medium? Or is there one? I don't know... but it's something we all ought to think about.

SoftwareMaven• 13 years ago

For functioning people with mental illnesses (well treated or not severe), it has gotten better. For non-functioning people, it has gotten worse, for them and for society. I have a loved one with functioning schizophrenia. She has great care and good support through her family (including one of the most loving big brothers I've had the pleasure to meet), her friends, her church and her school.

But I know if she has a true psychotic break, there is little to no support available beyond a 72 hour evaluation. Jail has become the defector storage place outside of the underside of bridges because there are far too few beds for people who need longer term care.

The state hospitals of the 50s were horrid places, but in dismantling them, we've done away with almost all long-term care for people who can't function due to mental illness. And that comes with a huge cost to society. There was a middle ground of "let's improve the care and treatment" that was completely ignored.

But, as a society, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about whether 11 bullets or 14 buckets are too many, even if a fire extinguisher can be shown to be a horrid weapon to somebody ill enough.

ljf• 13 years ago

The problem is figuring out who will harm. I know paranoid schizophrenics who have lived a whole life harming no one, some taking treatment, some who manage without it.

We can't condemn these people to a life in jail, just because sometimes bad people do bad things. I agree people should talk about their concerns, and talk with and help people that seem to be going off the rails. But as with everything in human life, there are a million shades of grey.

namank• 13 years ago

It has, google "epistemic injustice".

Mz6• 13 years ago

If you are genuinely successful at coping with difficulties of that sort, it typically goes unnoticed. You live a normalish life, not worth remarking upon. If you try to tell people your ordinary life is a grand accomplishment, they think you suffer from something akin to Munchausen Syndrome.

monochromatic2• 13 years ago

I wonder if there were cries for acid bans in the wake of this.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

Occasionally when stories about acid attacks reach lesser online forums, the comments will indeed be filled with cries of "why the hell are they even selling acid?". The commenters presumably do not realize that their local hardware store just a few minutes away is selling nasty shit as well.

_delirium• 13 years ago

If it happened enough I could imagine there being some kind of controls. Bulk purchases of certain kinds of fertilizer were controlled post-Oklahoma-City, for example. On a lower level, some jurisdictions have restrictions on spraypaint sales, in an effort to combat graffiti.

LatvjuAvs• 13 years ago

Without the incident, there is no heroic life to be lived. There is no lessons to be learned, there is no one left to be saved.

You must see little bit further how everything interacts like a connected cogwheels.

First you have emotional burst, the anger, the sadness, full range of emotions, then, you must go further than that. Then you must see how well it have played out.

seatac• 13 years ago

no offense but he looks like a certain Star Trek character I forget his name.

EliRivers• 13 years ago

How does adding "no offense" to the front of a statement affect how offensive the remainder of the statement is?

XorNot2• 13 years ago

About 6 months ago in my lab we had an acid attack. One student took offense to another telling him what to do, grabbed a hammer and the nearest vial of sulfuric acid and chased the guy down, knocked him down, and started pouring acid on him.

About the only lucky thing about the attack is that the victim didn't get any his eyes, but months on he's still recovering after multiple skin-grafts.

There isn't really a lesson that we can fathom from this really. It happened about 24 hours after an incident when the perpetrator had gotten angry and thrown a beaker on the floor, and literally 5 minutes before the acid attack happened (when the previous events were related to me) I commented that we should take it more seriously because if someone's not in control that's how acid gets thrown on people.

omarchowdhury• 13 years ago

Tell us more about the perpetrator.

XorNot2• 13 years ago

He was just a new student - working closely with the victim actually. Apparently he turned out to have schizophrenia, but it was previously undiagnosed or unreported or something. Which is just weird as hell because how do you get to Ph. D level and have schizophrenia in the first place?

aaron695• 13 years ago

It is an interesting story about someone's life and overcoming adversity.

But don't fall into the trap and read anything else into it, the things you should fear in life are quite boring. Some comments seem to be going down this path.

melc• 13 years ago

Thanks for posting this article. Dr. Joshua A. Miele is an incredible person and very inspiring. Thank you for your great work and contribution to people.

40 Years After an Acid Attack, a Life Well Lived

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