Doctor Death

"If we can aid people into coming into the world, why can't we aid them in exiting the world?" Jack Kevorkian

Well, there's something to be said for that line of thought. If people are determined that their lives are no longer worth living and they are convinced they no longer wish to live, who are we to stand in the way of their achieving their goal of death? If it were that simple. People always have the option of using their free will to plan their own death.

But achieving it may be another matter. If they've been physically handicapped, if they fear the consequences of their actions even while desiring it, if they haven't the imagination or the will to depart this mortal coil without outside assistance, then they need practical assistance. From someone else.

And there's the rub; it's one thing to reach a personal state where you feel people can do with themselves as they wish; another to actively encourage or assist in the process. Their anguish and pain becomes yours. You cannot step aside from your own conscience that may complain to you that you mightn't have completely understood the situation.

And then there are those who do understand the situation from the standpoint of living it. In pain and grief and suffering that they no longer wish to put up with. Or those, on the other hand, who feel it their obligation to humanely assist the sufferer to achieve end-of-life. Jack Kevorkian was that kind of person; he was utterly convinced it was the right thing to do.

He did not judge but he did encourage and he did lend himself to the enterprise of achieving death. He was the supreme enabler, having constructed a device that the individual wishing to kill themselves might use to self-administer a deadly substance. But people want more than a mechanical device, they want a sympathetic, compassionate aide to be with them and take responsibility for them.

And this is what he was willing to do on their behalf. And to do that he had to challenge society's reverence for life under any and all circumstances. This is not an enterprise for the squeamish. And he was prepared himself to make a sacrifice of himself to the cause which he considered a noble one.

His nobility might come under question given that he stated that Nazi medical experimentation might be excused because of the medical knowledge that was released from using their professional research talents on helpless victims destined for death. And, it would appear that autopsies on some of those whom he assisted to death revealed that not all his subjects were terminally ill.

The state of his mind and his trust in his own moral position and the arrogance that he displayed was evident also in his failure to consult with the physicians or psychiatrists who treated the patients whom Dr. Kevorkian took under his deathly wing. His cure for their unalterable wish to die was to grant them their wish; it does not seem that he made an effort to convince them of the value of life, under any dire circumstances.

He provoked authorities and the law and the justice system by challenging them directly to arrest him. He assisted in the death of a woman with Alzheimer's, and then later arranged for a film to be produced and CBS to broadcast it of himself actively administering a lethal injection. It was abundantly clear that his purpose was to bring the issue to a head.

It was. A warrant was issued, charging him with first-degree murder among other charges. He was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison, and served eight before his release. He had originally planned a death watch for himself, to starve to death in prison, to prove his point. In an interview later he admitted he was fearful of death, yet claiming the world's attitude toward voluntary euthanasia was hypocritical.

But he did make some headway into the general consciousness about the suffering of human beings whose fortune was not all that good with respect to their health, and who reserved for themselves the right to speed death along. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the practise of doctors writing prescriptions to aid terminally ill patients achieve death, to be legal.

And Jack Kevorkian himself no longer need fear death. After living his life for 83 years, and in the process of discovering his mission in life was to achieve death for others, he has met his own.