...I've ever heard of.

You can live about 3 minute without air
You can live 3 days with out water
You can live Three days without food

90% chance lack of H2O killed him

By your title you have already decided that it was an overdose, contrary to the article which states that her cause of death has yet to be determined. By posting that she died of an overdose, you are including unsubstantiated information that will likely taint the opinion of those who reply to your post, especially if they only go by the snippet of information you provided and didn't read the article.

I almost responded before I read the article because I was assuming you were being truthful in you title. You were not and we will not know the cause of death util the autopsy. In the interest of truthful disclosure I think you should remove the OD reference from the title until all the facts have been disclosed.

That's what they are saying about her? If she died from an OD, then, no, I wouldn't put her in that category. If she was using, she should have made sure that someone was caring for her child while she was using or getting help. It sounded like she had loved ones.

I've got kids I would never do anything like use drugs around them. I love them and want to be there for them.

than a guess by somebody else in the building. She might have shared her mom's seizure disorder. She might have suffered sudden cardiac death. She might have fallen in the bathroom and died of a slow intercranial bleed. There are a lot of possibilities.

It's just sad that she was alone with an infant.

Where the hell was the baby's father in all this?

Might come as a surprise, but single parents are a thing - Despite society trying to force the view of a man and a woman, some people are deciding to live life for themselves, rather then what society says is 'proper'.

living life for oneself didn't work out too well. or did, maybe, depending on how defined.

The sooner the world realizes that women can be independent from men the better. It's a old ideal that is long since obsolete, at this point all it's doing it holding the world back.

sex and children.

I don't think that it adds one bit to human happiness to have people isolated and 'living life for themselves'.

this article is a case in point.

It's a sexist ideal that women have to have a man playing some part in their lives to be happy.

Gotcha.

no matter how many kids she has. She just goes out and picks money off the trees in the back yard and shoulders 100% of the responsibility without breaking a sweat. Everybody chooses to do that. The kids' father buggering off has nothing to do with it.

Stats don't support that is a particularly good idea though

If the other parent wants to be there, that's great. Another adult to learn from. And they should WANT to be there, too. And then two parents are better than one.

Her mother died in November. Now the young mother and her baby are dead too. So much loss for one family to bear.

May the three rest in peace.

family . friends, neighbors, no one willing to pickup the phone or bang on the door. The war on drugs mifght be a failure but scumbags still sell them for profit...even if the profit is a body count.

I was Juror #5. I thought you might like to see how it went.

Automated Message
AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Results of your Jury Service

Mail Message
On Fri Mar 6, 2015, 09:40 PM an alert was sent on the following post:

Mother, baby found dead in Millvale apartment (Mom OD, Baby Died of Dehydration)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026324935

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

Unnecessary slanting in the topic title - The article outright says that no autopsy has been done and that they don't know what caused her death, so OP's choice to label it as a overdose is suspect.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Fri Mar 6, 2015, 09:44 PM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Post is definitely NOT about anything that is ok but looks like a news item and header may be right or wrong.. no one knows right now...
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: OK, technically it's "probable OD", but that would not fit in the subject line. Why not reply and ask OP to clarify?
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: May have been title slanting, but that is a debatable issue in this instance-- not a hidable one
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Oh FFS. It really doesn't matter how the post is titled. I mean, let's alert on truly awful posts, not something as tragic as this. Leave it alone.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

I laid out the reasons of why I think the title is misleading and that it is engaging in speculation on the author's part but in the seven years I've been here I might have alerted on one post, tops. I always find it better to engage in conversation than silence. If a post is extremely heinous, a assume that someone else has already submitted an alert.

I don't care who did alert.

I just thought that the OP would like to see how it worked out.

My objections to the wording might lead some to think that I was the guilty party and since you posted the results I just added my response to you post.

Be well

Uncle and another Aunt and Uncle lived in Millvale. That was a long time ago. Thingss must have changed a lot since then. When I lived there, everybody knew everybody else, and kept an eye out for each other. If someone wasn't seen for even several hours, a neighbor or friend would check to find out why. Something like that would NEVER have happened. It's really too bad those days are gone.

I'd like to agree the title should be changed, though. It's unfair to stigmatize the mother as a drug user before anyone knows what happened. The longer the title stays like that with comments already asking for the title to be changed, the more it seems like exploiting a horrible story for clickbait.

How does this relate to anything on a board such as DU?

I can find nothing in the story or your post to suggest ways to fix this issue.

Please do not post these horrible stories on an political board.

Just as when DUers posts about their personal health, employment, financial, etc., issues - there's really only a single degree of separation of such posts from the "polity", which is defined as:

Polity Definition
dictionary.search.yahoo.com

n. noun

1. The form of government of a nation, state, church, or organization.
2. An organized society, such as a nation, having a specific form of government.

For those of us who have been on DU from the beginning, there is a sense of personal connection between and among many of the posters. We are not a sterile, academic discussion board. The fact that someone has died unnoticed for a week (and in an apartment building, not some remote cabin in the woods), speaks to the dysfunctional isolation in our "modern" world and is a topic worthy of discussion. Certainly of value.

For whom the bell tolls
(No man is an island) by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

These famous words by John Donne were not originally written as a poem - the passage is taken from the 1624 Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and is prose.

There's a valuable lesson here for all of us. We need to keep in closer contact with our family members and neighbors who live alone. And if you hear a child (or anyone) crying, for god's sake, check it out.

When my Mom was elderly and living alone in another city, I checked in by phone with her nearly every day. In addition her neighbors on either side of her house, plus 2 families directly across the street were long time friends who kept an eye out for her. They all had my phone number for an emergency contact. If she had not brought her mail in from her front door mailbox, her longtime postman would have checked on her.

Now I am "elderly" (70 plus) and live alone, as do many of my elderly friends, several cousins
and widowed sister-in-law. We have occasionally and sadly commented to each other our awareness that if we had an accident or serious illness which incapacitated us, it could be weeks before anyone considered checking up on us. Everyone laughs at those "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" commercials. But even those devices are no safeguard if one falls and is unconscious, has a stroke, etc.

I had a miserable cold for about a week this winter, and didn't bother to go outside in terrible weather to get my mail for several days. My longtime mailman, god love him, knocked on my door to make sure I was OK.

At the other end of the age spectrum, the grandson of a woman I know died in his single room at a dorm at the University of Chicago, and it was only after 8 days, when the stench of his decomposing body spread to the hallway outside his room that his body was discovered. http://abc7chicago.com/archive/9434206/

Think about it, please. Is there a family member in your life who lives alone? Can you spare 2 minutes every other day to give them a quick call? Just a "Hi, I'm just checking in. Everything OK? Good. Talk to you again soon." If they're on line, you can quickly check in with them via email/FB/etc.

More from the OP link: