Category:Killed

Killed is a trait that is applied to an individual or a group of individuals who, however briefly, have lost their lives as a result of the action of someone or something. Killed individuals do not have to remain dead. Individuals restored to life still have been killed and can be killed again. Individuals who return from the grave in undeath likewise still have been killed. When the killing agent is someone, the inaction of a responsible party does in fact constitute action. Patients who die because their doctors could not be bothered to save them are killed. Individuals who collapse on the street and could have been saved by the intervention of bystanders are not killed. When the killing agent is something, it and its action must be specific. Individuals are killed by heart attacks which stop the beating of the heart. Individuals are not killed by, but rather die of, old age which is defined vaguely and is unclear as to its lethal action. Of course few people in the Land of Mists have the medical competence to distinguish death by heart attack from death by old age, and hence the spreading of such competence results in a growing number of people who are killed. This is a double-edged sword for medicine. Each death that is understood is a killing that it has failed to prevent.