ECSTASY DEATH PICTURES ARE 'TERRIBLE TRIPTYCH'

The pictures of Lorna Spinks published today speak for themselves, the text
is a mere adjunct. The lively five-year-old's shining eyes, the fun-loving
19-year-old and finally Lorna, ten minutes after her death, her face
bloated and streaked with blood, tubes into every orifice.

This is a terrible triptych of our times which strikes terror into every
parent: the trusting innocence of our children, the pleasure-seeking fun of
our teenagers and the random, brutal chance by which that hedonism can kill.

Lorna's parents made a decision to release these pictures with the hope -
like the parents of Leah Betts, the teenager who died in similar
circumstances in November 1995 - that they might warn others of the
consequences of taking ecstasy. It is a controversial decision.

It is very rare for images of dead people to appear in the media, and when
they do, they are usually victims in wars in foreign lands - as far away
from our daily experience as possible. When the pictures were printed of
the dead bodies (draped in cloth - only a foot showing) laid out in a
chapel because a Bedford hospital mortuary was full, there was a heated
debate about the decorum of death.

The rule in Anglo-Saxon culture has been that the privacy of the dead is
sacred. Open coffins are rare; we do not like to look at the dead. While we
give away our organs, we don't like our corpses to be seen.

But Lorna has not been given that privacy. I have profoundly ambivalent
feelings about the idea of my parents using my death as a warning to my
contemporaries. Would I want my tragedy and my foolishness exposed to the
passing interest of newspaper readers? Probably not, but once dead, do I
have rights over my own image? These are very difficult questions.

When I look at it from the perspective of Lorna's parents, I shift ground
and I can see how in my despair, there would be a desire to do something so
that some good could come out of the sheer waste of a life. This is often
the comfort (meagre though it is) that a secular culture looks for to deal
with suffering.

Does it work? The images of Lorna and of Leah must do something to strip
away the glamour of drugs and expose their unpredictable and destructive
consequences.

But the fear is that the biggest determinant of drug use is the example of
the peer group; Lorna's friends and acquaintances have had a harsh lesson,
but beyond this circle, there's a strong chance that for most teenagers
these stories are hardly more real than urban myths.

Meanwhile, the Spinks' anguish probably has the most impact on their
helpless already worried parents.