Whoever released unauthorized images of Ronald Poppo’s half eaten face did an extremely exploitative, unethical and awful thing. If they are in law enforcement or health care they should be fired and held accountable. These pictures aren’t ours and it must be extremely painful for his family to not only lose their loved one years ago but to be reminded of this by his gruesome hospital photos being splashed across TV and computer screens everywhere.

In addition, his attacker Rudy Eugene was not a zombie. Maybe calling him a zombie is some way that the rest of us can pretend that mental illness, drug abuse and indigence is something that won’t happen to us or people around us, a kind of denial by ridicule, but we don’t do ourselves any favors to live that fantasy.