posted on May 26, 2007 07:29:35 PM new
Kevorkian's Cause Founders As He's Freed
Updated 7:56 PM ET May 26, 2007
By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN
LANSING, Mich. (AP) - For nearly a decade, Dr. Jack Kevorkian waged a defiant campaign to help other people kill themselves.
The retired pathologist left bodies at hospital emergency rooms and motels and videotaped a death that was broadcast on CBS' "60 Minutes." His actions prompted battles over assisted suicide in many states.
But as he prepares to leave prison June 1 after serving more than eight years of a 10- to 25-year sentence in the death of a Michigan man, Kevorkian will find that there's still only one state that has a law allowing physician-assisted suicide _ Oregon.
Experts say that's because abortion opponents, Catholic leaders, advocates for the disabled and often doctors have fought the efforts of other states to follow the lead of Oregon, where the law took effect in late 1997.
Opponents defeated a measure in Vermont this year and are fighting similar efforts in California. Bills have failed in recent years in Hawaii, Wisconsin and Washington state, and ballot measures were defeated earlier by voters in Washington, California, Michigan and Maine.
Kevorkian's release could spur another round of efforts, if only to prevent anyone else from following his example.
"One of the driving forces of the (Oregon) law was to prevent the Jack Kevorkians from happening," said Kate Davenport, a communications specialist at the Death with Dignity National Center in Portland, Ore., which defended Oregon's law against challenges.
"It wasn't well regulated or sane," she said. "There were just too many potential pitfalls."
Kevorkian, 79, was criticized even by assisted suicide supporters because of his unconventional practices.
He used a machine he'd invented to administer fatal drugs and dropped off bodies at hospital emergency rooms or coroner's offices, or left them to be discovered in the motel rooms where he often met those who wanted his help.
At the time, some doctors didn't want to give dying patients too much pain medication, fearing they'd be accused of hastening death.
Oregon law allows only terminally ill, mentally competent adults who can self-administer the medication to ask a physician to prescribe life-ending drugs, and they must make that request once in writing and twice orally.
Oregon's experience shows that only a tiny percentage of people will ever choose to quicken their death, said Sidney Wanzer, a retired Massachusetts doctor who has been a leader in the right-to-die movement.
From the time the law took effect in 1997 until the end of last year, 292 people asked their doctors to prescribe the drugs they would need to end their lives, an average of just over 30 a year. Most of the 46 people who used the process last year had cancer, and their median age was 74, according to a state report.
Experts say the attention on assisted suicide has helped raise awareness caring for the terminally ill.
"End-of-life care has increased dramatically" in Oregon with more hospice referrals and better pain management, says Valerie Vollmar, a professor at Oregon's Willamette University College of Law who writes extensively on physician-assisted death.
Opponents and supporters of physician-assisted death say more needs to be done to offer hospice care and pain treatment for those who are dying and suffering from debilitating pain.
"The solution here is not to kill people who are getting inadequate pain management, but to remove barriers to adequate pain management," said Burke Balch, director of the Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes assisted suicide.
"We need to come up with better solutions to human suffering and human need," Balch said.
More end-of-life care is needed, but doctors should have a right to assist those who ask for their help in dying, Wanzer said.
"There are a handful of patients who have the best of care, everything has been done right, but they still suffer. And it's this person I think should have the right to say, `This is not working and I want to die sooner,'" Wanzer said.
Kevorkian has promised he'll never again advise or counsel anyone about assisted suicide once he's out of prison. But his attorney, Mayer Morganroth, said Kevorkian isn't going to stop pushing for more laws allowing it.
The state wants to go after money that Kevorkian makes following his release to help cover the cost of his incarceration. Morganroth has said his client has been offered as much as $100,000 to speak. Many of those speeches are expected to be on assisted suicide.
"It's got to be legalized," Kevorkian said in a phone interview from prison aired by a Detroit TV station on Monday. "I'll work to have it legalized. But I won't break any laws doing it."
___
On the Net:
Death With Dignity National Center: http://www.deathwithdignity.org
Vollmar's physician-assisted suicide Web site: http://www.willamette.edu/wucl/pas/index.htm
National Right to Life Committee: http://www.nrlc.org
To Die Well: http://www.todiewell.com
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Well, I don't agree with Dr. K's methods but I do agree with :
""Oregon law allows only terminally ill, mentally competent adults who can self-administer the medication to ask a physician to prescribe life-ending drugs, and they must make that request once in writing and twice orally.""
posted on May 27, 2007 11:52:48 AM new
Some history that many may not be aware of:
Dr. Death Still Here Among Us
By Debra J. Saunders
Sunday, May 27, 2007
After participating in the assisted suicide of more than 130 people and being convicted in the 1998 second-degree murder of a 52-year-old man with Lou Gehrig's disease, Jack Kevorkian, 79, is scheduled to be paroled June 1.
Fans of Kevorkian ought to be asking themselves: In that the ailing Kevorkian is in worse physical shape than many of the people whose lives he helped snuff out, why hasn't the death doc used his vaunted "medicide" on himself?
Kevorkian's first victim, Janet Adkins, 54, had early Alzheimer's, but felt well enough to play tennis just days before her 1990 visit to Kevorkian's death mobile. Kevorkian explained that Adkins had "had a wonderful life, a good life, but the quality of her life was slipping away due to an incurable disease and she didn't want to suffer." It is an argument he would make again and again.
It's not as if Kevorkian is in tennis-playing shape. According to his lawyer, Kevorkian has suffered from high blood pressure, arthritis, hernias, hepatitis C, cataracts, heart and lung disease and vertigo. His mental state cannot be too sharp -- not when one of his appeals argued that he was represented by incompetent counsel -- himself.
Why, oh why, then should Kevorkian endure more suffering?
The thing is, Kevorkian never particularly cared about the suffering of the people he helped kill. He cared about killing.
Early in his career, Kevorkian dreamed up a plan to conduct invasive medical experiments on living beings. He focused on death-row inmates facing execution, as he argued that the best way to understand the "mechanisms of a criminal mind" was to study "all parts of the intact living brain." The world saw him for the twisted ghoul he was.
Only later did Kevorkian hit on assisted suicide for people who were ostensibly terminally ill. Many liked the idea of a doctor who would alleviate suffering for the sick and not inflict on unwilling patients more care than they wanted.
Supporters overlooked the fact that patients already have the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment. They failed to notice that Kevorkian didn't offer pain control. They looked the other way when newspapers reported that some so-called patients -- including a depressed mother of two young daughters -- did not suffer from the illnesses they cited as the reason they wanted to die. Supporters did not want to know if the retired pathologist was a quack.
Kevorkian's acolytes saw only what they wanted to see -- sick adults who faced death without flinching.
The portrait was so reassuring that supporters refused to question whether Kevorkian rushed treatable people to an early death. And they did not care if their catchphrase "death with dignity" sent the cold message to the disabled that their condition is undignified -- and that they should do the world a favor and die.
Note that while living with illnesses is undignified for others, for the frail Kevorkian, life is precious. In 1997, Kevorkian pledged to starve himself to death in prison if convicted of assisting suicide. Yet -- here's a miracle -- he is still alive.
In 2004, Kevorkian's attorney told the Oakland Press that the state of Michigan should release Kevorkian because Kevorkian was so ill that he didn't think the retired pathologist would live "more than a year." Now that soon-to-be free Kevorkian is being offered lecture fees as high as $50,000, his health has improved. Another miracle.
Kevorkian's first post-prison interview will be on "60 Minutes" -- which is fitting, because Kevorkian's videotaped killing of Thomas Youk, which aired on "60 Minutes," prompted the prosecution that earned Kevorkian a prison sentence. The prosecutor, who had not wanted to try Kevorkian, later said that he was astonished at the death doc's "total lack of compassion" and "nonchalant" demeanor when he killed Youk.
The Youk segment garnered the TV news show its highest ratings of that season.
Mike Wallace, 89 -- another assisted-suicide fan who looks less fit than Janet Adkins was -- will interview Kevorkian. Do not expect a hard-hitting exchange. Expect to watch two old white guys discuss the moral value in killing (SET ITAL) other (END ITAL) sick people. As if they are the compassionate ones.
(SET ITAL) Note to readers: My husband, Wesley J. Smith, is a consultant to the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. (END ITAL)
posted on June 1, 2007 04:16:44 PM new
Linda, I think the difference is the decision whether to live or not. Some terminal people don't suffer as much as others even though they both might physically look bad. Maybe Kevorkian doesn't WANT to end his life yet. That's the difference.
posted on June 1, 2007 05:23:46 PM new
In that case, KD, they would be committing murder. Helping another person who is not dying to die would make them a partner in CRIME.
We as a society don't normally offer to help someone to 'off' themselves because they're depressed. We have other, non criminal ways to help them.
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Supporters overlooked the fact that patients already have the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment. They failed to notice that Kevorkian didn't offer pain control. They looked the other way when newspapers reported that some so-called patients -- including a depressed mother of two young daughters -- did not suffer from the illnesses they cited as the reason they wanted to die. Supporters did not want to know if the retired pathologist was a quack
posted on June 2, 2007 02:53:56 PM new
Well, here's a post from Helen that you seemed to have missed re-posting in your failed effort to be even mildy amusing....
Helenjw
posted on May 31, 2007 06:10:01 PM
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Just as I said, Mingo...you bat her around like a cat with a mouse. And here she comes, stumbling back for more...this time dragging Classic along."""
posted on June 2, 2007 10:00:55 PM new"Fans of Kevorkian ought to be asking themselves: In that the ailing Kevorkian is in worse physical shape than many of the people whose lives he helped snuff out, why hasn't the death doc used his vaunted "medicide" on himself?"
Linda, I was only answering why he might not choose to take his own life. It's only a guess.
Classic, I did stay out of her auctions and she went bankrupt because of it. In a way, it's all your fault. That's why she hates you...
