Posted on 06/14/2006 3:24:56 PM PDT by SJackson
A very sick 78-year-old doctor is dying in a Michigan prison, an anachronism left over from the 20th century. Should we let him die in prison, or do we have the decency to say, "Enough is enough. Release him and let him die at home"?
The doctor is Jack Kevorkian, who was sentenced in 1999 to 10 to 25 years in Michigan's Lakeland Correctional Facility for Men. He traded his freedom for openly, shamelessly touting what he called our "right to die with dignity." He'd spent the 10 prior years brashly, illegally helping 130 terminally ill people end excruciatingly painful lives.
After 10 years in prison, he finally comes up for parole the middle of next year. But his friends tell me he may not live until then.
To be honest, I had forgotten all about Dr. Kevorkian's long fight for death with dignity. After I made sure to sign my own "do not resuscitate" and "no heroic measures" directives, his plight slipped my mind. Then I got a note from the daughter of an old high school friend. Though unrelated to Dr. Kevorkian, her last name is the same. Often asked, "Are you related?" it led her to learn about this forgotten, dying man. Appalled at his frailness, she is backing a petition for the doctor's release.
When Dr. Kevorkian practiced in the 1980s, great pain was still a given endured stoically in childbirth, in accidents, in mental and physical illness, in death. At the end of life, assisted death was only ever OK for animals. It was outspoken, unflinching Dr. Kevorkian who forced us all to consider, "Do our parents have the right to a dignified death when there's no cure and only agony ahead? Or does anyone, even a doctor, have the right to help a sufferer end his or her own life?"
The debate over end-of-life options isn't resolved yet. Assisted suicide is still criminal in 44 states, including Wisconsin. Only in Oregon and Ohio is it explicitly legal. (Despite a push by the Bush team, the U.S. Supreme Court last year upheld Oregon's law, which sheltered 246 terminally ill Oregonians in its first eight years. Oregon, incidentally, has the lowest hospital death rate in the nation and the highest rate of people who are allowed to die at home. Oregon Hospice Association CEO Ann Jackson feels it's at least partly due to the fact that Oregonians can choose to die with dignity.)
Death is still an unpopular subject, despite public support for Terri Schiavo's right to die. But at least now doctors and hospitals urge us all to provide legal end-of-life do-not-resuscitate and no-heroic-measures directives. If you've ever been grateful that a loved one got you off the hook by "having it in writing," it's partly stubborn, crusading old Dr. Kevorkian you can thank.
Kevorkian antagonized a lot of people with his in-your-face flaunting of the "Do not kill no matter what" mandate. He thinks it was his crusading political and legal attacks that made Michigan throw away the key. "The government knows I'm not a criminal. The parole board knows I'm not a criminal. The judge knows I'm not a criminal." Yet he's sure: "I'll die in prison. There is nothing anyone can do. The public has no power."
Now that his 5-foot-8-inch frame is down to 114 pounds, do we still have anything to fear from Dr. Kevorkian? Or do you think he should be released to die at home?
Love him or hate him, if you think enough is enough, do add your signature as I did to the petition for his release at the Web site www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/761877453.
Judi K-Turkel is a journalist and author based in Madison. Published: June 13, 2006
My darling bride was so well cared for and doped up .. she smiled and loopily communicated until she lost ability to be concious .. about 6 hrs before she left us.
The argument about pain and dignity is, IMO .. valid perhaps to forgotten people.
Between being at home, having Hospice (God bless those angels!), and the drugs that are proscribed for terminal patients .. I can assure everyone .. at least for my wife and me .. Death was pretty much going to sleep.
Let Kevorkian have people around him, in a clinic, in a prison.
You reap what you sow.....
Let him lie in it.
Amen!
I don't know about any of you but I don't want to go that way. My dad didn't deserve that agony. If I had a choice, I would have let him go with dignity.
If he wants to die, all he's got to do is tie a sheet around his neck and hang himself...or he can get another con to do him in. There's plenty of ways to do away with yourself in prison. Convicts do it everyday.
Hey Dr. death....drip....drip....drip,
Naw, hook him up to an exhaust pipe in some dingey garage. Dignity, he don't need no stinkin' dignity.
Isn't that terrible? Surely they could have modified that. My mom died with a tumor the size of a Texas watermelon, with enough morphine in her system that she was loopy but comfortable. There surely are always ways.
IN the first place, society can't be an "a$$hole" as you put it. Society has laws for the protection of all, including those that can't protect themselves--SUCH AS THE UNBORN--but I digress. Our society enforces those laws, upheld by its courts and orders the sentences to be carried out. If justice is to be served, he dies right where he's at, serving out his sentence. Period.
Where is the BARF alert.
I say to Hell with Kervorkian. Let Kervorkian die in a prison hospital. or better yet give the man a hefty bag, some twine and a hose piping in CO. Then his body can be dumped on some landfill for the rats and carrion birds to eat.
The doctors told me they were giving him the maximum dose without killing him. They were forbidden by law giving him a higher dosage. I was sitting in the hallway most of the time and his cries still haunt me.
Let him stay in jail.
The only thing worth commenting on is this writer's name:
Judi K-Turkel
Is she related to the K-Marts?
As for Kevorkian...wasting away bit by bit locked up in a cell is too good for him.
Do they have a petition to leave him there but let him have his "kit"? I mean, if it was good enough for the goose...
"Yes, apparently some found him shining a flash light into the eyes of a dying man waiting for the moment of death."
My wife is a Respritory Therapist in a trauma center and her position in the trauma is right at the head of the patient. She has looked into hundreds of patient's eyes at the moment of death and it is one of the worst things about her job. If not bagging or doing something else, she tries to comfort them. Kevorkian is a ghoul.
We know he's very sick. But does this mean he's not well?
Is this satire?
Wow. Ever seen his artwork? Frightful.
I remember reading in some article on him that he would only eat canned food.
I don't think he weighed more than 114# when he went to jail.
Not exactly the picture of health.
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