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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Jack Kevorkian

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(born May 26, 1928, Pontiac, Mich., U.S.died June 3, 2011, Royal Oak, Mich.) U.S. pathologist, advocate and practitioner of physician-assisted suicide. He expressed early interest in experimentation on death-row inmates who had been rendered unconscious rather than executed; his ideas negatively affected his medical career. In the 1980s he devised his suicide machine, with which a person could commit suicide by merely pushing a button, and in the 1990s he assisted in the deaths of over 100 terminally ill persons. His actions provoked furious controversy and led to legislation and referenda; he was tried, convicted, and jailed twice in 1993, and his medical license was revoked. In 1998 he was convicted of murder for administering a lethal injection himself and was sentenced to 1025 years in jail. He was released on parole in 2007.

For more information on Jack Kevorkian, visit Britannica.com.

Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Jack Kevorkian

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Jack Kevorkian (born 1928) became known as "Dr.Death," in part, because he assisted many people in committing suicide. Kevorkian considered the right to die to be a basic personal right, having nothing to do with government laws. He felt there could be a time when a suffering person may choose death and that physicians should be allowed to assist.

Jack Kevorkian originally wanted to be a baseball radio broadcaster, but his Armenian immigrant parents felt that he should have a more promising career. So he became a doctor, specializing in pathology. Kevorkian worked primarily with deceased people, performing autopsies in order to study the essential nature of diseases. His parents never imagined that he would be the one to design the first modern Thanatron (Greek for "death machine") nor that he would be the first to help people use this machine.

Kevorkian was born on May 28, 1928, in Pontiac, Michigan. He was raised in an Armenian, Greek, and Bulgarian neighborhood. Kevorkian attended the University of Michigan medical school and graduated in 1952. Kevorkian initially received his macabre nickname, "Dr. Death," for his pioneering medical experiments in the 1950's. He photographed the eyes of dying patients in order to determine the exact time of death. He believed that this precise knowledge would yield valuable information about diseases. Kevorkian served as associate pathologist in three Michigan hospitals: St. Joseph's, Pontiac General, and Wyandotte General. He also worked as a pathologist in some Los Angeles hospitals. Kevorkian was the founder and director of the Checkup Multi-Phase Medical Diagnostic Center in Southfield, Michigan and Chief of Pathology at the Saratoga General Hospital in Detroit. He published more than 30 professional journal articles and booklets, including Prescription Medicine: The Goodness of Planned Death.

As Kevorkian witnessed the suffering of terminally ill patients, he became convinced that they had a moral right to end their lives when the pain became unbearable, and that doctors should assist in this process. To that end, he designed and constructed a machine that started a harmless saline intravenous drip into the arm of a person wishing to die. When the patient was ready, he or she would press a button that would stop the flow of the harmless solution and begin a new drip of thiopental. This chemical would put the patient into a deep sleep, then a coma. After one minute, the timer in the machine would send a lethal dose of potassium chloride into the patient's arm, stopping the heart in minutes. The patient would die of a heart attack while in a deep sleep. The death, according to Kevorkian, would be quick, painless and easy. For a person suffering from the pain of terminal cancer or some other disease, the machine would provide what Kevorkian called a painless "assisted suicide."

First Assisted Suicide

In June 1990, Kevorkian assisted in the first of many physician-assisted suicides. He used his machine to hasten the death of Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old woman from Portland, Oregon, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The State of Michigan immediately charged him with murder, although the case was later dismissed, largely due to the unclear state of Michigan law on assisted suicide. By 1999, Kevorkian had been present at the death of nearly 130 people. In each case he made his assistance known to the public, as part of a determined campaign to change attitudes and laws on physician-assisted suicide.

Public Reaction

Many agreed with what Kevorkian was doing. On June 21, 1996, during an interview with a Detroit radio station, famed broadcast journalist Mike Wallace said, "I am an old man. I'd be the first, if necessary, to go to Kevorkian." Wallace said he could imagine seeking Kevorkian's services if he were suffering from a painful and lingering disease. "You have the right as a human being to do what you want to do with yourself," said Wallace.

Others disagreed with this opinion. The National Spinal Cord Injury Association opposed assisted suicide because there were better ways around the problem. "Refusing medical treatment is your choice to die how you wish-in your own home with your family or in your hospital bed. Assisted suicide is you giving somebody the power to take your life away. A person is given the power to kill."

Legal Issues

Despite constant legal problems, Kevorkian continued to assist with suicides. In 1994, he faced murder charges in the death of Thomas Hyde, who suffered from a terminal nerve illness known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Jurors agreed with the argument that there was no statute against assisted suicide in the state of Michigan, and thus Kevorkian could not be found guilty.

The Kevorkian team of defense lawyers won yet another acquittal. They successfully argued that a person may not be found guilty of criminally assisting a suicide if that person had administered medication with the "intent to relieve pain and suffering," even it if did hasten the risk of dying. Kevorkian was prosecuted four times in Michigan for assisted suicides, and he was acquitted in three of those cases; a mistrial was declared in the fourth.

In 1998, the Michigan legislature enacted a law making assisted suicide a felony punishable by a maximum five year prison sentence or a $10,000 fine. This law went into effect months before a ballot proposition legalizing assisted suicide was defeated by Michigan voters. It closed the loophole on relief of pain and suffering, which Kevorkian's lawyer's relied upon to obtain acquittals. The statute provides that a person who knows another intends to kill himself and provides the means, participates in the suicide, or helps to plan the suicide, is guilty of a felony.

Kevorkian proceeded with what he thought was right, and challenged authorities to arrest and prosecute him. On September 17, 1998 he took the ultimate step in the assisted suicide of Thomas Youk. Instead of asking the patient to press the button to inject the fatal dose of drugs, Kevorkian, after speaking gently to the man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, administered the drug himself. Furthermore, he videotaped the entire event so there would be no doubt of what he had done. He then gave the tape to the television show 60 Minutes. The episode was aired for the whole world to see.

Shortly thereafter, Kevorkian was arrested in Michigan for first-degree murder. In this case, when he injected Thomas Youk with the lethal drugs, he committed euthansia, or mercy killing, not assisted suicide. Kevorkian was also charged under the felony law that bans assisted suicide, which went into effect approximately two weeks before Youk's death. Kevorkian decided to represent himself in the Youk murder trial. On March 26, 1999, he was convicted of the lesser offense of second degree murder by a Michigan jury.

In the maelstrom of opinion created by his beliefs, Kevorkian continued his campaign for legalized physician-assisted suicides. He expected to be arrested, and he often was. He felt he was doing his best for people who were terminally ill and suffering great discomfort. In so doing, Kevorkian raised national awareness of assisted suicide and forced the courts and legislatures to make decisions on this controversial issue.

Further Reading

Detroit Free Press, March 7, 1997; December 10, 1998; November 21, 1998; March 23-28, 1999; April 12, 1999.

Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization, www.FinalExit.org

Newsweek.com, Jack Kevorkian, Death Wish, http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/issue/14_99a/printed/us/na/na0714_1.htm

West's Encyclopedia of American Law:

Kevorkian, Jack

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Jack Kevorkian has become the most well-known advocate in the United States for the cause of physician-assisted suicide. Having helped over thirty terminally or chronically ill individuals kill themselves since 1990, Kevorkian has sparked a national debate on the ethical issues involved in euthanasia, often called mercy killing. Though Kevorkian has argued that his actions have prevented needless suffering for patients in pain and allowed them to die with dignity, others see his work as a violation of the medical profession's most cherished ethical principles affirming life over death. Working in an area of vexing ethical issues, Kevorkian has championed himself as a breaker of unnecessary taboos surrounding death.

Kevorkian became a focus of national attention in 1990 after he assisted the suicide of Janet Adkins, a fifty-four-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative disease of the brain that causes loss of memory and intellectual impairment. Adkins had heard through the media about Kevorkian's invention of a suicide machine that allowed individuals who were ill to administer a lethal dose of poison to themselves. The machine, which Kevorkian assembled out of $45 worth of materials, consisted of three dripping bottles that delivered successive doses of three fluids: a harmless saline solution; a painkiller; and, finally, a poison, potassium chloride. When Adkins contacted Kevorkian about using the machine on her, Kevorkian agreed. Kevorkian diagnosed Adkins as suffering from Alzheimer's and arranged to perform the assisted suicide in a public park, in his rusting 1968 Volkswagen van. After Kevorkian had inserted an intravenous needle into her arm, Adkins pressed a red button that caused the machine to administer the painkiller and then the poison. Within five minutes, Adkins had died of heart failure. Within days, Kevorkian had become a national media celebrity, appearing on such television shows as Nightline, Geraldo, and Good Morning, America.

This first of his assisted suicides illustrated the problems many observers have with Kevorkian's methods. Though she had begun to show early signs of Alzheimer's, Adkins was in good health and was not terminally ill; she committed suicide more out of fear of future suffering than out of current suffering. She had joined the Hemlock Society—an organization that advocates voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill patients—before she even became ill. In addition, Adkins's Alzheimer's may have impaired her ability to make decisions. Some observers wondered if she was also suffering from depression, a treatable mental illness. Moreover, in cases in which a terminally ill patient has expressed a desire to die, established rules of medical ethics require that two independent doctors must confirm that the patient's condition is unbearable and irreversible; Kevorkian had ignored this requirement.

Kevorkian was charged with first-degree murder in this case, but a district judge ruled that prosecutors failed to show that Kevorkian had planned and carried out Adkins's death. Attempts to prosecute Kevorkian were hampered by Michigan's lack of any law against physician-assisted suicide. Most other states have laws making this act a felony.

In early 1991, a Michigan judge issued an injunction barring Kevorkian's use of the suicide machine, and in the same year, the state of Michigan suspended his medical license. Kevorkian defied such legal actions and continued to help ailing people end their life. Now that he could no longer prescribe drugs, Kevorkian assisted suicides with a contraption that administered carbon monoxide through a gas mask. As he practiced assisted suicide and published on the subject—describing it in his own terms as "medicide" or "planned death"— he continued to be surrounded by controversy. For example, an autopsy performed on the body of the second person he helped to commit suicide, a patient who had complained of a painful pelvic disease, found no evidence of any disease.

In 1992, the Michigan Legislature passed a bill outlawing assisted suicide, designed specifically to stop Kevorkian's activities (Mich. Comp. Laws §752.1021). This law was used to charge Kevorkian for assisting in the death of Thomas W. Hyde, Jr., in August 1993. Kevorkian was jailed twice that year, in November and December. During his second jail stay, he went on an eighteen-day fast in which he protested his arrest by drinking only juice. His bail was reduced and was paid by Geoffrey Fieger, a flamboyant lawyer who has done a great deal for Kevorkian's cause as his friend and legal counsel. Kevorkian was found not guilty.

Kevorkian then attempted to place before Michigan voters a ballot initiative, Movement Ensuring the Right to Choose for Yourself (Mercy), which sought to amend the Michigan Constitution to guarantee competent adults the right to request and receive medical assistance in taking their own life. However, he failed to garner enough signatures to put the initiative on the 1994 ballot. In December 1994, the Michigan Supreme Court upheld the law making assisted suicide a crime, and the following year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Kevorkian's appeal.

Kevorkian continued to assist suicides even as prosecutors in his home county unsuccessfully attempted to convict him on charges of murder or assisted suicide. On May 14, 1996, an Oakland County Circuit Court jury again acquitted Kevorkian of assisted suicide. In this case, the prosecution had argued that assisted suicide was a crime under Michigan common law. After their loss, county prosecutors admitted it was unlikely that they would take Kevorkian to trial again.

In both his actions and his statements, Kevorkian has flouted the ethical standards of the medical profession on the issue of assisted suicide. The American Medical Association, the professional association of physicians, specifically forbids the practice of physician-assisted suicide. Many doctors deplore Kevorkian's techniques and see them as endangering the trust that must exist between physician and patient. Even the Hemlock Society opposes Kevorkian's actions, citing his lack of typical procedural precautions.

Kevorkian's efforts in the cause of assisted suicide are only the latest in a series of his unconventional, even morbid, attempts to make a name for himself in the area of medical research. Kevorkian earned the nickname Dr. Death in 1956, only three years after obtaining his medical degree, when he began making what he called death rounds at the Detroit-area hospital where he was employed. During these rounds, he examined dead bodies in order to collect evidence supporting his contention that the time of a person's death could be determined from the condition of the person's eyes. Kevorkian caused more controversy—and lost his job at the University of Michigan—in 1960 when he published the book Medical Research and the Death Penalty, in which he argued for the vivisection (the conduct of medical experiments on live subjects) of prisoners sentenced to death. Claiming it would be "a unique privilege … to be able to experiment on a doomed human being," he outlined a plan in which the prisoner-subject would be anesthetized at the time of execution, then used for scientific experiments lasting hours or months, and finally executed using a lethal overdose. According to Kevorkian, this would create both a more painless execution and greater advances in medical research. The use of condemned prisoners for medical experimentation and organ donation has remained a consistent theme for Kevorkian. His 1991 book Prescription: Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death rehashes these same arguments while also making a case for assisted suicide. In another unsuccessful venture, Kevorkian re-created experiments conducted by Soviet scientists by taking blood from recently deceased individuals and transfusing it to live patients.

In a later article setting forth his plans for assisted suicide, Kevorkian suggested setting up suicide clinics: "The acceptance of planned death implies the establishment of well-staffed and well-organized medical clinics (‘obitoria') where terminally ill patients can opt for death under controlled circumstances of compassion and decorum." As his use of obitoria and medicide indicate, Kevorkian has a penchant for coining words. He dubbed his first suicide machine alternately a mercitron or a thanatron—the latter from the Greek word for death, thanatos—and has used the word obitiatry to indicate the medical specialization in death.

Kevorkian was born May 26, 1928, in Pontiac, Michigan. Named Murad Kevorkian at birth by his Armenian immigrant parents, he was the first of his family to attend college. He attended the University of Michigan Medical School and did his internship at Detroit-area hospitals. Acquaintances of Kevorkian testify to his prodigious intellect. The retired physician has demonstrated talent as a writer, painter, and composer. A series of eighteen paintings he did on such grisly topics as genocide, hanging, and cannibalism created a stir in Michigan during the 1960s. Kevorkian has also commented that his unconventional ideas have been influenced by the history of his Armenian ancestors, particularly a genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed in World War I by the Turks. Kevorkian has never married.

Though many deplore Kevorkian's actions, he has increased public awareness of some of the most difficult ethical issues surrounding death and dying. With medical technology's increasing ability to prolong life have come more situations in which the extended life is one of great pain and suffering. Kevorkian's efforts to assist people in their death, though often falling short of accepted professional standards of diagnosis and care, have sparked a needed discussion on these issues.


Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Jack Kevorkian

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Jack Kevorkian

Jack Kevorkian at UCLA's Royce Hall, January 15, 2011.
Born (1928-05-26)May 26, 1928
Pontiac, Michigan, U.S.
Died June 3, 2011(2011-06-03) (aged 83)
Royal Oak, Michigan, U.S.
Cause of death Thrombosis
Nationality American
Education University of Michigan Medical School
Years active 1952–2011
Known for Influencing euthanasia debate worldwide
Profession Physician, painter, author, and musician
Institutions Henry Ford Hospital
University of Michigan Medical Center
Saratoga General Hospital
Specialism Euthanasia Medicine
Research Euthanasia and Painless Death

Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian (play /kɨˈvɔrkiən/;[1] May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011[2]), commonly known as "Dr. Death", was an American pathologist, euthanasia activist, painter, author, composer and instrumentalist. He is best known for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicide; he claimed to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He famously said, "dying is not a crime".[3]

Beginning in 1999, Kevorkian served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence for second-degree murder. He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition he would not offer suicide advice to any other person.[4]

As an oil painter and a jazz musician, Kevorkian marketed limited quantities of his visual and musical artwork to the public.

Contents

Early life

Kevorkian was born in Pontiac, Michigan to Armenian immigrants. His father Levon was born in the village of Passen, near Erzurum, and his mother Satenig was born in the village of Govdun, near Sivas.[5] His father moved from Turkey in 1912 and made his way to Pontiac, where he found work at an automobile foundry. Satenig fled the Armenian Genocide of 1915, finding refuge with relatives in Paris, and eventually reuniting with her brother in Pontiac. Levon and Satenig met through the Armenian community in their city, where they married and began their family. The couple had a daughter, Margaret, in 1926, followed by son Jacob – who later earned the nickname "Jack" from an American teacher who misread the birth certificate[6] — and, lastly, the third child, a daughter, Flora.[7] Kevorkian, who taught himself German and Japanese,[8] graduated from Pontiac Central High School with honors in 1945, at the age of 17. In 1952, he graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor.[9][10][11] Kevorkian never married.[12] He completed residency training in anatomical and clinical pathology and briefly conducted research on blood transfusion, but was unable to function effectively as a hospital pathologist. Kevorkian left the active practice of medicine and, for a time, was even homeless.[13]

Career

Over a period of decades, Kevorkian developed several controversial ideas related to death. In a 1959 journal article, Kevorkian wrote:

“ I propose that a prisoner condemned to death by due process of law be allowed to submit, by his own free choice, to medical experimentation under complete anaesthesia (at the time appointed for administering the penalty) as a form of execution in lieu of conventional methods prescribed by law.[14] ”

Senior doctors at the University of Michigan, Kevorkian's employer, opposed the proposal and Kevorkian chose to leave the University rather than give up advocating his ideas. Ultimately, Kevorkian gained little support for his plan. Kevorkian would return to the idea of using death row inmates for medical purposes after the Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia re-instituted the death penalty. Kevorkian advocated harvesting the organs from inmates after the death penalty was carried out for transplant into sick patients. Kevorkian failed to gain the cooperation of prison officials.[15]

As a pathologist at Pontiac General Hospital, Kevorkian experimented with transfusing blood from the recently deceased into live patients. He drew blood from corpses recently brought into the hospital and transferred it successfully into the bodies of hospital staff members. Kevorkian thought that the US military might be interested in using this technique to help wounded soldiers during a battle, but the Pentagon was not interested.[15]

In the 1980s, Kevorkian wrote a series of articles for the German journal Medicine and Law that laid out his thinking on the ethics of euthanasia.[9][16]

Kevorkian started advertising in Detroit newspapers in 1987 as a physician consultant for "death counseling". His first public assisted suicide was in 1990, of Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old woman diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1989. He was charged with murder, but charges were dropped on December 13, 1990 as there were, at that time, no laws in Michigan regarding assisted suicide.[17] However, in 1991 the State of Michigan revoked Kevorkian's medical license and made it clear that given his actions, he was no longer permitted to practice medicine or to work with patients.[18] Between 1990 and 1998, Kevorkian assisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill people, according to his lawyer Geoffrey Fieger. In each of these cases, the individuals themselves allegedly took the final action which resulted in their own deaths. Kevorkian allegedly assisted only by attaching the individual to a euthanasia device that he devised and constructed. The individual then pushed a button which released the drugs or chemicals that would end his or her own life. Two deaths were assisted by means of a device which delivered the euthanizing drugs mechanically through an I.V. Kevorkian called it a "Thanatron" (death machine).[19] Other people were assisted by a device which employed a gas mask fed by a canister of carbon monoxide which was called "Mercitron" (mercy machine).[20]

Criticism and Kevorkian's response

My aim in helping the patient was not to cause death. My aim was to end suffering. It's got to be decriminalized.

Jack Kevorkian[21]

According to a report by the Detroit Free Press, 60% of the patients who committed suicide with Kevorkian's help were not terminally ill, and at least 13 had not complained of pain. The report further asserted that Kevorkian's counseling was too brief (with at least 19 patients dying less than 24 hours after first meeting Kevorkian) and lacked a psychiatric exam in at least 19 cases, 5 of which involved people with histories of depression, though Kevorkian was sometimes alerted that the patient was unhappy for reasons other than their medical condition. (In 1992, Kevorkian himself wrote that it is always necessary to consult a psychiatrist when performing assisted suicides because a person's "mental state is ... of paramount importance."[22]) The report also stated that Kevorkian failed to refer at least 17 patients to a pain specialist after they complained of chronic pain, and sometimes failed to obtain a complete medical record for his patients, with at least three autopsies of suicides Kevorkian had assisted with showing the person who committed suicide to have no physical sign of disease. Rebecca Badger, a patient of Kevorkian's and a mentally troubled drug abuser, had been mistakenly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The report also stated that Janet Adkins, Kevorkian's first patient, had been chosen without Kevorkian ever speaking to her, only with her husband, and that when Kevorkian first met Adkins two days before her assisted suicide he "made no real effort to discover whether Ms. Adkins wished to end her life," as the Michigan Court of Appeals put it in a 1995 ruling upholding an order against Kevorkian's activity.[22] According to The Economist: "Studies of those who sought out Dr. Kevorkian, however, suggest that though many had a worsening illness ... it was not usually terminal. Autopsies showed five people had no disease at all. ... Little over a third were in pain. Some presumably suffered from no more than hypochondria or depression."[23]

In response, Kevorkian's attorney Geoffrey Fieger published an essay stating, "I've never met any doctor who lived by such exacting guidelines as Kevorkian ... he published them in an article for the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry in 1992. Last year he got a committee of doctors, the Physicians of Mercy, to lay down new guidelines, which he scrupulously follows."[22] However, Fieger stated that Kevorkian found it difficult to follow his "exacting guidelines" due to "persecution and prosecution", adding "[H]e's proposed these guidelines saying this is what ought to be done. These are not to be done in times of war, and we're at war."[22]

In a 2010 interview with Sanjay Gupta, Kevorkian stated an objection to the status of assisted suicide in Oregon, Washington, and Montana. Only in those three states is assisted suicide legal in the United States, and then only for terminally ill patients. To Gupta, Kevorkian stated, "What difference does it make if someone is terminal? We are all terminal."[24] In his view, a patient did not have to be terminally ill to be assisted in committing suicide, but did need to be suffering. However, he also said in that same interview that he declined four out of every five assisted suicide requests, on the grounds that the patient needed more treatment or medical records had to be checked.[25]

Art career

Kevorkian was a jazz musician and composer. The Kevorkian Suite: A Very Still Life was a 1997 limited release CD of 5,000 copies from the 'Lucid Subjazz' label. It features Kevorkian on the flute and organ playing his own works with "The Morpheus Quintet". It was reviewed in Entertainment Weekly online as "weird" but "good natured".[26] As of 1997, 1,400 units had been sold.[26] Kevorkian wrote all the songs but one; the album was reviewed in jazzreview.com as "very much grooviness" except for one tune, with "stuff in between that's worthy of multiple spins."[27]

He was also an oil painter. His work tended toward the grotesque; he sometimes painted with his own blood, and had created pictures such as one "of a child eating the flesh off a decomposing corpse."[16] Of his known works, six were made available in the 1990s for print release. The Ariana Gallery in Royal Oak, Michigan is the exclusive distributor of Kevorkian's artwork. The original oil prints are not for release.[28] Sludge metal band Acid Bath used his painting "For He is Raised" as the cover art for their 1996 album Paegan Terrorism Tactics.[29]

In 2011, his paintings became the center of a legal entanglement between his sole heir and a Massachusetts museum.[30]

Trials

Kevorkian was tried four times for assisting suicides between May 1994 to June 1997. With the assistance of Fieger, Kevorkian was acquitted three times. The fourth trial ended in a mistrial.[2] The trials helped Kevorkian gain public support for his cause. After Oakland County prosecutor Richard Thompson lost a primary election to a Republican challenger,[31] Thompson attributed the loss in part to the declining public support for the prosecution of Kevorkian and its associated legal expenses.[32]

Conviction and imprisonment

Part of a series on
Euthanasia
Types
Animal · Child · Voluntary
Non-voluntary · Involuntary
Views
Religious (Buddhist · Catholic)
Groups
Dignitas · Dignity in Dying
Exit International
People
Jack Kevorkian · Philip Nitschke
Books
Final Exit
The Peaceful Pill Handbook
Jurisdictions
Australia · Canada
India · Mexico
Netherlands · New Zealand
Switzerland · United Kingdom
United States
Laws
Oregon Death with Dignity Act
Washington Death with Dignity Act
Court cases
Washington v. Glucksberg (1997)
Gonzales v. Oregon (2006)
Baxter v. Montana (2009)
Alternatives
Assisted suicide
Palliative care
Principle of double effect
Terminal sedation
Other issues
Suicide tourism
Groningen Protocol
Euthanasia device
Euthanasia and the slippery slope

On the November 22, 1998, broadcast of 60 Minutes, Kevorkian allowed the airing of a videotape he made on September 17, 1998, which depicted the voluntary euthanasia of Thomas Youk, 52, who was in the final stages of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. After Youk provided his fully informed consent (a sometimes complex legal determination made in this case by editorial consensus) on September 17, 1998, Kevorkian himself administered Thomas Youk a lethal injection. This was highly significant, as all of his earlier clients had reportedly completed the process themselves. During the videotape, Kevorkian dared the authorities to try to convict him or stop him from carrying out mercy killings. Youk's family described the lethal injection as humane, not murder.

On March 26, 1999, Kevorkian was charged with second-degree murder and the delivery of a controlled substance (administering the lethal injection to Thomas Youk).[9] Because Kevorkian's license to practice medicine had been revoked eight years previously, he was not legally allowed to possess the controlled substance. As homicide law is relatively fixed and routine, this trial was markedly different from earlier ones that involved an area of law in flux (assisted suicide). Kevorkian discharged his attorneys and proceeded through the trial representing himself, a decision he later regretted.[2] The judge ordered a criminal defense attorney to remain available at trial as standby counsel for information and advice. Inexperienced in law but persisting in his efforts to represent himself, Kevorkian encountered great difficulty in presenting his evidence and arguments. He was not able to call any witnesses to the stand as the judge did not deem the testimony of any of his witnesses relevant.[33]

After a two day trial, the Michigan jury found Kevorkian guilty of second-degree homicide.[2] Judge Jessica Cooper sentenced Kevorkian to serve 10–25 years in prison and told him:

"This is a court of law and you said you invited yourself here to take a final stand. But this trial was not an opportunity for a referendum. The law prohibiting euthanasia was specifically reviewed and clarified by the Michigan Supreme Court several years ago in a decision involving your very own cases, sir. So the charge here should come as no surprise to you. You invited yourself to the wrong forum. Well, we are a nation of laws, and we are a nation that tolerates differences of opinion because we have a civilized and a nonviolent way of resolving our conflicts that weighs the law and adheres to the law. We have the means and the methods to protest the laws with which we disagree. You can criticize the law, you can write or lecture about the law, you can speak to the media or petition the voters."

Kevorkian was sent to a prison in Coldwater, Michigan to serve his sentence.[34] After his conviction (and subsequent losses on appeal) Kevorkian was denied parole repeatedly until 2007.[35]

In an MSNBC interview aired on September 29, 2005, Kevorkian said that if he were granted parole, he would not resume directly helping people die and would restrict himself to campaigning to have the law changed. On December 22, 2005, Kevorkian was denied parole by a board on the count of 7–2 recommending not to give parole.[36]

Reportedly terminally ill with Hepatitis C, which he contracted while doing research on blood transfusions,[37] Kevorkian was expected to die within a year in May 2006. After applying for a pardon, parole, or commutation by the parole board and Governor Jennifer Granholm, he was paroled for good behavior on June 1, 2007. He had spent eight years and two and a half months in prison.[38][39]

Kevorkian was on parole for two years, under the conditions that he not help anyone else die, or provide care for anyone older than 62 or disabled.[40] Kevorkian said he would abstain from assisting any more terminal patients with death, and his role in the matter would strictly be to persuade states to change their laws on assisted suicide. He was also forbidden by the rules of his parole from commenting about assisted suicide.[41][42]

Activities after his release from prison

Jack Kevorkian answering questions at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with lawyer Mayer Morganroth (right) and former Foreign Minister of Armenia, Raffi Hovannisian (left)

Kevorkian gave a number of lectures upon his release. He lectured at universities such as the University of Florida,[43] Nova Southeastern University,[44] and the University of California, Los Angeles.[45] His lectures have not been limited to the topic of euthanasia; he has also discussed such topics as tyranny, the criminal justice system, politics, the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Armenian culture. He appeared on Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto on September 2, 2009 to discuss health care reform.

On April 15 and 16, 2010, Kevorkian appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°,[46] Anderson asked, "You are saying doctors play God all the time?" Kevorkian said: "Of course. Anytime you interfere with a natural process, you are playing God."[47] Director Barry Levinson and actors Susan Sarandon and John Goodman, who appeared in You Don't Know Jack, a film based on Kevorkian's life, were interviewed alongside Kevorkian. Kevorkian was again interviewed by Cavuto on Your World on April 19, 2010 regarding the movie and Kevorkian's world view. You Don't Know Jack premiered April 24, 2010 on HBO.[48] The film premiered April 14 at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City. Kevorkian walked the red carpet alongside Al Pacino, who portrayed him in the film.[49] Pacino received Emmy and Golden Globe awards for his portrayal, and personally thanked Kevorkian, who was in the audience, upon receiving both of these awards. Kevorkian stated that both the film and Pacino's performance "brings tears to my eyes – and I lived through it".[50]

2008 Congressional race

See also: United States House of Representatives elections in Michigan, 2008

On March 12, 2008, Kevorkian announced plans to run for United States Congress to represent Michigan's 9th congressional district against eight-term congressman Joe Knollenberg (R-Bloomfield Hills), Central Michigan University Professor Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Township), Adam Goodman (L-Royal Oak) and Douglas Campbell. (G-Ferndale). Kevorkian ran as an independent and received 8,987 votes (2.6% of the vote).[51]

Death

Kevorkian had struggled with kidney problems for years.[52] He was diagnosed with liver cancer, which "may have been caused by hepatitis C," according to his longtime friend Neal Nicol.[53] Kevorkian was hospitalized on May 18, 2011, with kidney problems and pneumonia.[2] Kevorkian's condition grew rapidly worse and he died from a thrombosis on June 3, 2011, eight days after his 83rd birthday, at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.[2] According to his attorney, Mayer Morganroth, there were no artificial attempts to keep him alive and his death was painless.[53] Judge Thomas Jackson, who presided over Kevorkian's first murder trial in 1994, commented that he wanted to express sorrow at Kevorkian's death and that the 1994 case was brought under "a badly written law" aimed at Kevorkian, but he tried to give him "the best trial possible". Kevorkian was buried in White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery Troy, Michigan.[54]

Legacy

Maria Silveira, a professor of internal medicine, said she became involved with palliative care partly because of the attention Kevorkian brought to the complex issue of unintended suffering, adding that he had a tremendous impact and fueled the public awareness of unintended suffering and the need to address it. "Dr. Jack Kevorkian didn’t seek out history, but he made history," she said.[55] John Finn, medical director of palliative care at the Catholic[56] St. John’s Hospital, said Kevorkian's methods were unorthodox and inappropriate.[55] Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's lawyer in the 1990s, said that Kevorkian revolutionized the concept of suicide by working to help people end their own suffering, because he believed physicians are responsible for alleviating the suffering of patients, even if that meant allowing patients to die.[55] Derek Humphry, author of the suicide handbook, Final Exit, said Kevorkian was "too obsessed, too fanatical, in his interest in death and suicide to offer direction for the nation."[57] Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan, said Kevorkian “was a major historical figure in modern medicine."[55] The Catholic Church in Detroit said Kevorkian left behind a "deadly legacy" that denied scores of people their right to humane deaths.[58] Philip Nitschke, founder and director of right-to-die organisation Exit International, said that Kevorkian "moved the debate forward in ways the rest of us can only imagine. He started at a time when it was hardly talked about and got people thinking about the issue. He paid one hell of a price, and that is one of the hallmarks of true heroism."[59]

The epitaph on Kevorkian's tombstone reads, "He sacrificed himself for everyone's rights."[60]

Publications

Books
  • Kevorkian, Jack (1959). The Story of Dissection. Philosophical Library. ISBN 978-1-258-07746-4. 
  • Kevorkian, Jack (1960). Medical Research and the Death Penalty: A Dialogue. Vantage Books. ISBN 978-0-9602030-1-7. 
  • Kevorkian, Jack (1966). Beyond Any Kind of God. Philosophical Library. ISBN 978-0-8022-0847-7. 
  • Kevorkian, Jack (1978). Slimmericks and the Demi-Diet. Penumbra, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9602030-0-0. †
  • Kevorkian, Jack (1991). Prescription: Medicide, the Goodness of Planned Death. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-0-87975-872-1. 
  • Kevorkian, Jack (2004). glimmerIQs. Penumbra, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9602030-7-9.  *
  • Kevorkian, Jack (2005). Amendment IX: Our Cornucopia of Rights. Penumbra, Inc. ISBN 09602030IX. 
  • Kevorkian, Jack (2010). When the People Bubble POPs. World Audience, Inc. ISBN 978-1-935444-91-6. 

† = Later incorporated in abridged form into glimmerIQs

* = Revised and distributed in 2009 by World Audience, Inc.

Selected journal articles
  • Kevorkian, J. (1985). "Opinions on capital punishment, executions and medical science". Medicine and Law 4 (6): 515–533. PMID 4094526.  edit
  • Kevorkian, J. (1987). "Capital punishment and organ retrieval". Canadian Medical Association Journal 136 (12): 1240. PMC 1492232. PMID 3580984. //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1492232.  edit
  • Kevorkian, J. (1988). "The last fearsome taboo: Medical aspects of planned death". Medicine and Law 7 (1): 1–14. PMID 3277000.  edit
  • Kevorkian, J. (1989). "Marketing of human organs and tissues is justified and necessary". Medicine and Law 7. (6): 557–565. PMID 2495395.  edit

See also

References

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  2. ^ a b c d e f Schneider, Keith (June 3, 2011). "Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83; A Doctor Who Helped End Lives". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/04kevorkian.html. Retrieved June 3, 2011. 
  3. ^ Wells, Samuel; Quash, Ben (2010). Introducing Christian Ethics. John Wiley and Sons. p. 329. ISBN 978-1-4051-5276-1. 
  4. ^ Monica Davey. "Kevorkian Speaks After His Release From Prison". The New York Times. June 4, 2007.
  5. ^ Kevorkian, Jack (2009) (Paperback). glimmerIQs. World Audience, Inc.. ISBN 978-1-935444-88-6. 
  6. ^ Nicol, Neal; Harry Wylie (2006). Between the Dead and the Dying. London: Satin Publications, Ltd.. ISBN 1-904132-72-3. 
  7. ^ Kevorkian, Jack (December 15, 2010). "Biography". [1]. http://thekevorkianpapers.com/about/biography. Retrieved January 19, 2011. 
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  11. ^ Azadian, Edmond Y.; Hacikyan, Agop J.; Franchuk, Edward S. (1999). History on the move: views, interviews and essays on Armenian issues. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 233. ISBN 0-8143-2916-0. http://books.google.com/?id=KGciVUhpzXUC&lpg=PP1&dq=History%20on%20the%20move%3A%20views%2C%20interviews%20and%20essays%20on%20Armenian%20issues.&pg=PA233#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
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  32. ^ Davis, Robert (August 8, 1996). "Assisted Suicide". USA Today. p. 3A. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/USAToday/access/16341398.html?dids=16341398:16341398&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Aug+08%2C+1996&author=Ron+Franklin%3B+Tom+Curley%3B+Robert+Davis&pub=USA+TODAY+%28pre-1997+Fulltext%29&desc=TWA+probe+could+turn+toward+wreckage+today. Retrieved August 3, 2010. "Thompson, the first Oakland County prosecutor in 24 years to lose an election, agreed that the controversy clearly was an issue in his defeat." 
  33. ^ Williams, Marie Higgins (2000). Pro Se Criminal Defendant, Standby Counsel, and the Judge: A Proposal for Better-Defined Roles, The. 71 U. Colo. L. Rev.. p. 789. http://heinonlinebackup.com/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/ucollr71&section=34 
  34. ^ Jessica Cooper (April 14, 1999). "Statement from Judge to Kevorkian". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/14/us/statement-from-judge-to-kevorkian.html. 
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