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Ottawa Citizen, Canada
June 4, 2011 Saturday
Final Edition
A unique obsession with euthanasia; Pathologist known as Doctor Death
challenged views on human suffering
source The Times, London; With Files From Reuters
Jack Kevorkian was known to the public by the epithet "Doctor Death,"
a name which reflected an unsavoury obsession with euthanasia, which
was eventually adjudged by an American jury to be a criminal one. Over
10 years he was responsible for helping more than 100 people in the
U.S. to take their own lives through the use of carbon monoxide
poisoning or lethal injection.
He became a public figure in the U.S. in 1990 when he assisted in the
death of a woman diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease, and he
achieved global notoriety in November 1998 when CBS broadcast a film
showing him administering a lethal injection to 52-year-old Thomas
Youk, of Michigan, a man suffering from a degenerative nerve illness.
With the permission of Youk and his wife, Kevorkian filmed the entire
episode. In the film Youk repeatedly told Kevorkian that he wanted to
die, twice signing a letter instructing him to end his life.
It was the first time Kevorkian had administered a fatal injection
himself. Previously he had simply made his suicide machine, the
so-called Mercitron, available to those who wanted to die, so that
they could administer the drugs themselves.
At the end of the television program he said: "They must charge me,
because if they do not, that means they don't think it's a crime. They
don't need any more evidence, do they?" It was part of a long campaign
by Kevorkian, who always maintained that if he were jailed for his
activities he would starve himself.
The show created a storm. Religious groups were outraged, advertisers
dropped away, and CBS was criticized for peddling footage of a dying
man as current affairs. CBS ratings greatly improved.
A warrant was issued charging Kevorkian with first-degree murder,
criminal assistance to a suicide (Michigan had introduced a ban
specifically to curb the doctor's activities) and delivery of a
controlled substance.
By the time he went to trial in March 1999, Kevorkian had a falling
out with his lawyer, Geoff Fieger, who had seen him through many
previous cases. "He wants to get himself put in jail and then starve
to death," said the lawyer. "Well I don't assist in the suicide of my
clients." Kevorkian represented himself.
On March 26, 1999, he was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for
murder. Only a lenient judge and the fact that Michigan did not have
the death penalty saved him from a lengthier sentence or execution. He
was released on parole in 2007.
Kevorkian did not leave the public eye after his exit from prison,
giving occasional lectures and in 2008 running for Congress
unsuccessfully.
An HBO documentary on his life and a movie, You Don't Know Jack,
starring Al Pacino, brought him back into the limelight last year.
He died early on Friday at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan,
where he had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and
heart problems, said Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian's attorney and
friend. He was 83.
"Dr. Jack Kevorkian was a rare human being," Fieger told reporters on
Friday. "It's a rare human being who can single-handedly take on an
entire society by the scruff of its neck and force it to focus on the
suffering of other human beings."
In a June 2010 interview with Reuters Television, the right-to-die
activist said he was afraid of death as much as anyone else and said
the world had a hypocritical attitude toward voluntary euthanasia, or
assisted suicide.
"If we can aid people into coming into the world, why can't we aid
them in exiting the world?" he said.
Doctor-assisted suicide essentially became law in Oregon in 1997 and
in Washington state in 2009. The practice of doctors writing
prescriptions to help terminally ill patients kill themselves was
ultimately upheld as legal by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jack Kevorkian was born on May 28, 1928, the son of Armenian
immigrants. He studied medicine at the University of Michigan,
qualifying in 1952, whereupon he was called up, serving 15 months in
Korea.
When he returned to civilian life, he decided on a career in
pathology. Here his first research was looking at the changes in the
human eye immediately before, during and immediately after death.
He also regularly visited a state penitentiary in Ohio, where he
proposed that medical experiments be performed on death row convicts.
In an article published in Germany, he said that the activities of
Nazi doctors could be excused because some physiological knowledge had
been gained from the experiments.
After six years as a pathologist at Pontiac General Hospital, his work
became increasingly sporadic and eventually his licence to practise
medicine was revoked. He invented a new type of baseball cap, which he
unsuccessfully tried to market.
In the late 1980s he moved toward euthanasia, placing an advertisement
in local newspapers which read: "Doctor consultant for the terminally
ill who choose death w/dignity." At home he built the device he called
the Mercitron, a "suicide machine" which delivered a fatal injection
to its user.
In 1990 he made a video of the death of Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old
woman who was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.
In it Kevorkian appeared to goad the clearly confused woman into
saying that she wanted to end her life.
Most of his subjects were women, and autopsies showed that most of
them were not terminally ill. Dr L. J. Dragovic, an Oakland County
chief medical officer, revealed in a study of 69 cases that only 16
had been suffering from a terminal illness. While 48 others were
afflicted with non-life-threatening conditions, the remaining five
were not ill at all. Kevorkian was notorious for not consulting his
clients' physicians or psychiatrists.
Thanks to his lawyer, Kevorkian escaped prosecution four times in the
1990s. To the end he was convinced that the Michigan courts were in
the hands of the Catholic Church (which like all religion, he held in
contempt), and compared himself to a victim of the Spanish Inquisition
or the Gestapo.
June 4, 2011 Saturday
Final Edition
A unique obsession with euthanasia; Pathologist known as Doctor Death
challenged views on human suffering
source The Times, London; With Files From Reuters
Jack Kevorkian was known to the public by the epithet "Doctor Death,"
a name which reflected an unsavoury obsession with euthanasia, which
was eventually adjudged by an American jury to be a criminal one. Over
10 years he was responsible for helping more than 100 people in the
U.S. to take their own lives through the use of carbon monoxide
poisoning or lethal injection.
He became a public figure in the U.S. in 1990 when he assisted in the
death of a woman diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease, and he
achieved global notoriety in November 1998 when CBS broadcast a film
showing him administering a lethal injection to 52-year-old Thomas
Youk, of Michigan, a man suffering from a degenerative nerve illness.
With the permission of Youk and his wife, Kevorkian filmed the entire
episode. In the film Youk repeatedly told Kevorkian that he wanted to
die, twice signing a letter instructing him to end his life.
It was the first time Kevorkian had administered a fatal injection
himself. Previously he had simply made his suicide machine, the
so-called Mercitron, available to those who wanted to die, so that
they could administer the drugs themselves.
At the end of the television program he said: "They must charge me,
because if they do not, that means they don't think it's a crime. They
don't need any more evidence, do they?" It was part of a long campaign
by Kevorkian, who always maintained that if he were jailed for his
activities he would starve himself.
The show created a storm. Religious groups were outraged, advertisers
dropped away, and CBS was criticized for peddling footage of a dying
man as current affairs. CBS ratings greatly improved.
A warrant was issued charging Kevorkian with first-degree murder,
criminal assistance to a suicide (Michigan had introduced a ban
specifically to curb the doctor's activities) and delivery of a
controlled substance.
By the time he went to trial in March 1999, Kevorkian had a falling
out with his lawyer, Geoff Fieger, who had seen him through many
previous cases. "He wants to get himself put in jail and then starve
to death," said the lawyer. "Well I don't assist in the suicide of my
clients." Kevorkian represented himself.
On March 26, 1999, he was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for
murder. Only a lenient judge and the fact that Michigan did not have
the death penalty saved him from a lengthier sentence or execution. He
was released on parole in 2007.
Kevorkian did not leave the public eye after his exit from prison,
giving occasional lectures and in 2008 running for Congress
unsuccessfully.
An HBO documentary on his life and a movie, You Don't Know Jack,
starring Al Pacino, brought him back into the limelight last year.
He died early on Friday at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan,
where he had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and
heart problems, said Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian's attorney and
friend. He was 83.
"Dr. Jack Kevorkian was a rare human being," Fieger told reporters on
Friday. "It's a rare human being who can single-handedly take on an
entire society by the scruff of its neck and force it to focus on the
suffering of other human beings."
In a June 2010 interview with Reuters Television, the right-to-die
activist said he was afraid of death as much as anyone else and said
the world had a hypocritical attitude toward voluntary euthanasia, or
assisted suicide.
"If we can aid people into coming into the world, why can't we aid
them in exiting the world?" he said.
Doctor-assisted suicide essentially became law in Oregon in 1997 and
in Washington state in 2009. The practice of doctors writing
prescriptions to help terminally ill patients kill themselves was
ultimately upheld as legal by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jack Kevorkian was born on May 28, 1928, the son of Armenian
immigrants. He studied medicine at the University of Michigan,
qualifying in 1952, whereupon he was called up, serving 15 months in
Korea.
When he returned to civilian life, he decided on a career in
pathology. Here his first research was looking at the changes in the
human eye immediately before, during and immediately after death.
He also regularly visited a state penitentiary in Ohio, where he
proposed that medical experiments be performed on death row convicts.
In an article published in Germany, he said that the activities of
Nazi doctors could be excused because some physiological knowledge had
been gained from the experiments.
After six years as a pathologist at Pontiac General Hospital, his work
became increasingly sporadic and eventually his licence to practise
medicine was revoked. He invented a new type of baseball cap, which he
unsuccessfully tried to market.
In the late 1980s he moved toward euthanasia, placing an advertisement
in local newspapers which read: "Doctor consultant for the terminally
ill who choose death w/dignity." At home he built the device he called
the Mercitron, a "suicide machine" which delivered a fatal injection
to its user.
In 1990 he made a video of the death of Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old
woman who was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.
In it Kevorkian appeared to goad the clearly confused woman into
saying that she wanted to end her life.
Most of his subjects were women, and autopsies showed that most of
them were not terminally ill. Dr L. J. Dragovic, an Oakland County
chief medical officer, revealed in a study of 69 cases that only 16
had been suffering from a terminal illness. While 48 others were
afflicted with non-life-threatening conditions, the remaining five
were not ill at all. Kevorkian was notorious for not consulting his
clients' physicians or psychiatrists.
Thanks to his lawyer, Kevorkian escaped prosecution four times in the
1990s. To the end he was convinced that the Michigan courts were in
the hands of the Catholic Church (which like all religion, he held in
contempt), and compared himself to a victim of the Spanish Inquisition
or the Gestapo.