The death of Jack Kevorkian by natural causes has a certain irony, but it is not surprising. His driving motive was always obsession with death. Indeed, as he described in his book Prescription Medicide, Kevorkian’s overriding purpose in his assisted-suicide campaign was pure quackery, e.g., to obtain a societal license to engage in what he called “obitiatry,” that is, the right to experiment on the brains and spinal cords of “living human bodies” being euthanized to “pinpoint the exact onset of extinction of an unknown cognitive mechanism that energizes life.”
So, now that he is gone, what is Kevorkian’s legacy? He assisted the suicides of 130 or so people and lethally injected at least two by his own admission (his first and his last); as a consequence of the latter, he served nearly ten years in prison for murder. But I think his more important place in contemporary history was as a dark mirror that reflected how powerful the avoidance of suffering has become as a driving force in society, and indeed, how that excuse seems to justify nearly any excess.
Thus, while the media continually described him as the “retired” doctor who helped “the terminally ill” to commit suicide, at least 70 percent of his assisted suicides were not dying, and five weren’t ill at all according to their autopsies. It. Didn’t. Matter. Kevorkian advocated tying assisted suicide in with organ harvesting, and even stripped the kidneys from the body of one of his cases, offering them at a press conference, “first come, first served.” It. Didn’t. Matter. And as noted above, he wanted to engage in ghoulish experiments. It. Didn’t. Matter. He was fawned over by the media (Time invited him as an honored guest to its 75th anniversary gala, and he had carte blanche on 60 Minutes), enjoyed high opinion polls, and after his release from prison was transformed by sheer revisionism into an eccentric Muppet. He was even played by Al Pacino in an HBO hagiography.
Kevorkian was disturbingly prophetic. He called for the creation of euthanasia clinics where people could go who didn’t want to live anymore. They now exist in Switzerland and were recently overwhelmingly supported by the voters of Zurich in an initiative intended to stop what is called “suicide tourism.” Belgian doctors have now explicitly tied euthanasia and organ harvesting. In the U.S., mobile suicide clinics run by Final Exit Network zealots continue unabated despite two prosecutions, as voters in two states legalized Kevorkianism as a medical treatment.
Time will tell whether Kevorkian will be remembered merely as a kook who captured the temporary zeitgeist of the times, or whether he was a harbinger of a society that, in the words of Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne, “believes in nothing [and] can offer no argument even against death.“
— Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow in the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, and a legal consultant for the Patient’s Rights Council.
"...at least 70 percent of his assisted suicides were not dying, and five weren’t ill at all according to their autopsies."
Mr. Smith, can you provide a source for that 70% figure?
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There is one source at least.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...will be remembered merely as a kook ...or whether he was a harbinger of a society that..."
False choice. What a shoddy piece of work that entire post is.
"...how powerful the avoidance of suffering has become as a driving force in society, and indeed, how that excuse seems to justify nearly any excess."
Replace that with some people have the compassion to allow people to accept death on their own terms, without forcing them through months or years of meaningless agony to the same end.
If your religious beliefs don't allow you to painlessly end your existence on your own terms but somehow magically allow you all manner of unnatural life extending technology even after you are so far gone you are no longer you, that's fine, but don't try to impose your belief system on the rest of the world. The Terry Schiavo wing of the Republican party is, I think, the uncompassionate wing despite what they may think of themselves.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBy your own admission the right to die with dignity enjoys majority support among the populace, or the "temporary zeitgeist of the times" if you will.
The man, for all his sins, helped people who wanted to end their suffering when modern medicine offered no relief. That should be their right. Who are we to tell people suffering from terminal illness that they should continue to live in misery because we don't approve of the alternative?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe big problem here is that in many cases, the right to die quickly becomes an obligation to die.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJohnW: A careful Google search would work. You can start with the New England Journal of Medicine. External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd a careful reading of the report also helps. The quote at issue, I believe, is: "We report on a descriptive clinical analysis of the 69 persons who died with the assistance of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in Oakland County, Michigan, between 1990 and 1998. Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, assisted in the deaths of over 100 people. In 1999, he was sent to prison after being convicted of second-degree murder. We analyzed data from the medical examiner's files, including autopsy findings, for the 69 deaths that were investigated by the Oakland County district office. Since the procedures of medical examiners vary, we excluded deaths investigated and studied at autopsy elsewhere."
69 cases examined for the period 1990-98. Very limited sampling from at least 13 years ago.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat does being terminally ill have to do with anything? Lots of people suffer from lots of things. Many of them end their suffering with a rope, car, pills, gun or razor blade. Why shouldn't they be able to have a medically-administered cocktail injected?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe difference, Mitch, is the inclusion of the health care system and the government.
Suicide is always possible. Just jump off the Golden Gate bridge. But to have the medical establishment drive you there, get you out of the car, to the edge, and then push you over is quite a different matter.
The drive by liberals to have the government decide who should be murdered (they would want to die, if they could talk), is indeed a slippery slope which must be resisted vigorously.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJohnW: Good question. I've noticed that NRO bloggers tend not to provide links to support factual assertions. I wouldn't hold my breath for Mr. Smith's response.
MarkW: what are examples of the "many cases"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I
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- Mark Twain
Dr. Kevorkian did the country a great service by moving the ball forward in end of life issues. A great man.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou mispoke -it's not "end of life issues" it's about end "your human" life issues.
Once Catholic Holland is now euthanizing INVOLUNTARILY one of 11 of all deaths there. One in five deaths there are due to all forms of legal and illegal (shhh -it's the government paid doctors)euthansia. Human life has become a throwaway product to match our throwaway cultures. God save us from ourselves!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks Nick L. and Mr. Smith.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseKevjin - I'm no statistician, but that strikes me as a pretty decent sample.
The study noted, though, that 50% of the folks had suffered a decline in health lately, while not being terminal. Who knows how to categorize that? The individuals in question are undoubtedly the best judges. I don't think the 70% figure is as bad as it's meant to sound.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSorry, that should be 72%, not 50% in my comment above. 50 was the actual quantity of cases.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"But I think his more important place in contemporary history was as a dark mirror that reflected how powerful the avoidance of suffering has become as a driving force in society, and indeed, how that excuse seems to justify nearly any excess."
Hmm. Well, I think that his more important place in history was as a truth mirror that reflected how innate and natural the avoidance of needless and non-productive suffering has always been in humanity, and indeed, how opposition to any elimination or reduction of said suffering is the dark mirror of allegedly life-loving ideological conservatives.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wonder, did he accept death peacefully or fearfully?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo "Dr. Death's" death is ironic (because he was Dr. DEATH, get it? *Wink, nudge*), but not surprising (I guess because he was 83, and everyone dies?).
Clearly the observations of a first-class mind.
For anyone interested, the NEJOM study defined "teriminal illness" as one that would likely cause death within six months. So, if a subject had an incurable disease that was sure to kill them within eight months' time, they were not "terminally ill" by the standards of this report.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI would call the responses below nonsense, but unfortunately, the line of thinking they represent is worse than that, it is downright dangerous.
The path from "assisted suicide" to voluntary euthanasia to involuntary euthanasia to murder is a very slippery one and not a figment of right-to-life activists' imagination. It was most prominently trod by Germany of the 1930's, whose program of euthanasia for terminally ill children (with the consent of their parents) quietly transitioned into the mass murder of infants.
The fundamental problem is that "assisted suicide" and murder are very difficult to differentiate. The only evidence that differentiates the two is the testimony of the person allegedly requesting death. But testimony can easily be fabricated; and what if the person who leaves testimony that he has requested death later changes his mind?
But the more serious problem is that of the individual who does not have the legal capacity to make such a decision; which happens to include, not just children, but that significant portion of the terminally ill who are incapacitated or incoherent. Who decides for them? The law says that their legal guardians do. What is the difference between a legal guardian signing an "assisted suicide" agreement for his ward and the same person taking out a contract for a hit on his ward? Superficially, they may look different, but realistically, they are functionally identical.
Of course, Kevorkian sympathizers would claim that all kinds of protections could theoretically be put into place to ensure that there aren't any abuses of the system. But the experience of Germany in the 1930's was that such protections--which were ostensibly in place--were routinely softened up or bypassed.
That happened because the real objective was not to relieve the suffering of individuals, but to relieve society of problematic individuals that pose a burden. To be blunt, I wonder if the modern drive for "assisted suicide" is based on the same premise. We have far better medications for dealing with pain and discomfort than we have ever had; and yet we have a stronger push to facilitate the removal of the terminally ill than we have ever had. Is this about relieving them of the burden of pain, or is it really about relieving us of the burden of having to care for them?
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