Tweet
The Detroit News
June 3 2011
Jack Kevorkian forced nation to confront right to die
Fieger says 'history will look favorably' on assisted-suicide doctor
Doug Guthrie, Oralandar Brand-Williams and Mark Hicks/ The Detroit News
Royal Oak
In the end, the man who stirred a national debate about
physician-assisted suicide didn't need anyone to help him die.
By his own standards, Jack Kevorkian, 83, didn't qualify for help in
ending his life, said his lawyer, Mayer Morganroth.
"He was in no pain and had no suffering," Morganroth said. "He had
talked many times about how if he got in that kind of shape, he would
end his own life. But that wasn't the case for him in the end."
The man known as "Dr. Death" for admitting he helped 130 people commit
suicide between 1990-99, died peacefully early Friday in Beaumont
Hospital listening to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Kevorkian
had been hospitalized for pneumonia and kidney problems, and likely
died from a blood clot that moved late Thursday from his lungs to his
heart, said Morganroth.
According to Kevorkian's wishes, there will be no autopsy. Funeral
arrangements and burial will be private, Morganroth said.
The former Oakland County pathologist built his first suicide machine
in 1989 to let patients throw a switch to kill themselves. He escaped
legislators' efforts to rein him in and prevailed in four trials on
various criminal charges, including murder, with the help of his
lawyer and friend, Geoffrey Fieger.
"History will look very favorably upon Dr. Jack Kevorkian," said
Fieger, who defended him on many of his assisted suicide cases.
The first person Kevorkian helped commit suicide was Janet Adkins, a
54-year-old Alzheimer's patient from Portland, Ore.
She died June 4, 1990, in the back of Kevorkian's Volkswagen bus,
parked in Groveland Park near Holly. Adkins had told Kevorkian she
could no longer play the piano or remember the names of her sons and
did not want to live that way.
Longtime friend Judy Humiston said Adkins saw Kevorkian as "the
perfect solution to her problem."
"She was very adamant that she wanted to end her life," Humiston said.
"She felt there was no sense having a body walking around when she
wasn't really inside."
Kevorkian launched an important debate on end-of-life rights, she
said. "What he did was get people to stop and think about this. He
brought up a very serious social problem that needed to be looked at."
Legislators frustrated
Frustrated officials could find no law preventing Kevorkian from
helping others kill themselves. He ignored the revocation of his
medical license and an injunction to stop. Courts overturned
legislation to ban the practice.
Over the next eight years, the short, gaunt doctor with big glasses
and a trademark crew cut kept providing lethal gas and chemicals to
those whom he considered terminally ill and desired an end to their
suffering.
Kevorkian supporters viewed his work as a blessing.
"He certainly helped people at the end of their lives avoid a lot of
pain and misery," said Stanley David Ball. His father, Stanley Ball,
died with Kevorkian's help on Feb. 4, 1993, at age 82 in Ball's
Leland, Mich., home.
The same day at Ball's home, Kevorkian helped Mary Biernat, 73, a
cancer patient from Indiana, commit suicide.
The older Ball, an ex-farmer and agricultural agent, sought
Kevorkian's help after struggling with pancreatic cancer and
blindness.
"He had a great life and didn't want to finish it off the way the
disease took people," his son said. His dad "danced a jig" when
Kevorkian agreed to come, the son added. "He was his old wonderful,
good-natured self. My hat's off to Jack Kevorkian. He saved my father
a lot of trouble."
Dared prosecutors
Cocky and combative, Kevorkian publicly announced the assisted
suicides and promoted what he saw as a need for a national recognition
of death rights. By his actions, Kevorkian dared prosecutors to charge
him and forced politicians and the public to wrestle with the conflict
between compassion and moral implications.
Kevorkian continued to push the envelope and was found guilty in 1999
of second-degree murder after administering a lethal injection to
Thomas Youk of Waterford Township, who had Lou Gehrig's disease.
The September 1998 incident was videotaped and replayed on CBS' "60 Minutes."
"He wanted to move on in a dignified way, and slip away in peace,"
said Terry Youk, Thomas Youk's brother.
Kevorkian was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison and was
incarcerated for eight years, until his release in 2007.
Jessica Cooper believes Kevorkian, who went on a 19-day hunger strike
while locked up in 1993, wanted to be sent to prison for Youk's death
to generate more national attention. Cooper, now Oakland County
prosecutor, presided over Kevorkian's 1999 trial and sentenced him to
the maximum prison term.
"I spent an inordinate amount of time advising him of his
constitutional right to counsel and how he would have been better
served," Cooper said. "I don't know whether he wanted to be martyred,
but I got that feeling."
But Morganroth said that was only partially the case. "The judge was
unaware of the disagreement he had had with the two young lawyers who
volunteered to help him," he said. "He came to me at the end and I
took over on the last day of trial, but it was too late."
Terry Youk said he saw Kevorkian as "unwavering in his devotion to
seeing that people had rights available for them when they were
terminally ill.
"He really gave his life to fight for that right for people," he said.
Ballot initiative fails
Kevorkian's conviction ended nearly a decade in the spotlight, and the
right-to-die movement sputtered. More than a decade after his last
assisted suicide, the practice is legal only in Oregon, Washington and
Montana.
Two months after Kevorkian fatally injected Youk, Michigan voters
overwhelmingly rejected legalizing assisted suicide in November 1998.
"In terms of getting the problem and possible solutions out to the
general public, he achieved a great deal," said Derek Humphry, who
founded the Hemlock Society, which supported assisted suicide. "On the
other hand, he set us back in terms of the medical profession. ... I
wish he had been a bit more diplomatic."
Kevorkian's push for what he considered compassionate end-of-life care
grew out of his early experiences in medicine. The son of Armenian
refugees from World War I, he was born in Pontiac in 1928. He
graduated from the University of Michigan's medical school in 1952
with a specialty in pathology, the study of death and disease.
During his internship at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Kevorkian
said a woman dying of cancer helped spark his later work. In his 1991
book, "Prescription: Medicide, The Goodness of Planned Death," he said
the woman seemed "as though she were pleading for help and death at
the same time." The incident convinced him physician-assisted suicide
was ethical and proper.
In a presentation in Washington, D.C., in 1958, Kevorkian called for
medical experimentation on willing death row inmates. Officials at
U-M, where he then worked, were appalled.
>From 1961-66, Kevorkian occasionally transfused cadaver blood into
patients at Pontiac General Hospital. He wrote about it in a medical
journal, which again thrust him into the spotlight. He argued Soviets
did it in World War II to save the wounded.
Kevorkian's story was retold last year in an HBO movie, "You Don't
Know Jack: The Life and Deaths of Jack Kevorkian," starring Al Pacino.
When asked about the right-to-die debate at a Detroit premiere,
Kevorkian adamantly defended his actions. "This is an ethical
practice," he said. "One that doctors should be able to practice
without fear. Once something is declared ethical it is covered by law.
Not religion or politicians."
He forced change
The man who convicted Kevorkian, former Oakland County Prosecutor
David Gorcyca, told the Associated Press on Friday that he always
assumed the man would take his own life.
Opponents had accused Kevorkian of pushing to legalize euthanasia, and
said many he helped die weren't sick.
Burke Balch, director of the National Right to Life's Robert Powell
Center for Medical Ethics, said Friday: "While some euthanasia
advocates have sought to distance themselves from his bizarre
positions and tactics, his tragic legacy illustrates the dangers to
the most vulnerable when compassionate, humane responses to depression
or disability are replaced with death as an acceptable final
solution."
Cooper, who sentenced Kevorkian, said: "I did what the law required."
But she also said Kevorkian's radical advocacy resulted in practical
changes in how society deals with end-of-life issues.
"He brought to the forefront end-of-life issues," she said. "Those
were not things that were discussed publicly before. That debate
continues in medical schools and on Main Street, but I think the
debate he stirred resulted in the growth and greater acceptance of
hospice care and greater opportunity for death with dignity. I don't
know if that was his intended effect or a fortunate side effect, but
that is what occurred in Michigan."
Morganroth said Kevorkian was pleased with the greater emphasis on
hospice care that followed his efforts, but he wanted to see more.
"He felt end-of-life was a medical procedure that should be the
responsibility of doctors," Morganroth said. "The debate he caused
resulted in the increase in the amount of morphine hospice is allowed
to give, but he never really saw that as death with dignity."
Kevorkian wanted to see the medical profession adopt his methods, by
forming panels to professionally evaluate the pain, suffering and
wishes of a patient, and then meeting the patient's request to end
life, Morganroth said.
"He looked at factors, medical history, psychiatric evaluations,
whether the person was terminal, and in the final case, whether the
person was even able to do it themselves," Morganroth said. "He took
130 cases, but he had 620 applications. He turned down four out of
five. He believed this is the direction that medicine will eventually
take."
Turn for the worse
Morganroth said he and Kevorkian spoke as late as Thursday afternoon
about his rehabilitation and a book signing tour that was to start
later this month in Detroit and include stops in New York and Florida.
Kevorkian had published a book titled "When the People Bubble Popped,"
about overpopulation, and another containing copies of his limericks,
music and art. Many of his paintings and drawings are in the Armenian
Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Mass.
Morganroth said complications set in about 10:30 p.m. A niece, Ava
Janus of Troy, joined him.
"The head nurse was stroking his forehead. She had asked him what kind
of music he liked and she found Bach on an Internet station,"
Morganroth said. "The doctors and nurses couldn't have been nicer or
treated him with more respect."
http://www.detnews.com/article/20110604/METRO/106040339/1031/Jack-Kevorkian-forced-nation-to-confront-right-to-die
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
June 3 2011
Jack Kevorkian forced nation to confront right to die
Fieger says 'history will look favorably' on assisted-suicide doctor
Doug Guthrie, Oralandar Brand-Williams and Mark Hicks/ The Detroit News
Royal Oak
In the end, the man who stirred a national debate about
physician-assisted suicide didn't need anyone to help him die.
By his own standards, Jack Kevorkian, 83, didn't qualify for help in
ending his life, said his lawyer, Mayer Morganroth.
"He was in no pain and had no suffering," Morganroth said. "He had
talked many times about how if he got in that kind of shape, he would
end his own life. But that wasn't the case for him in the end."
The man known as "Dr. Death" for admitting he helped 130 people commit
suicide between 1990-99, died peacefully early Friday in Beaumont
Hospital listening to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Kevorkian
had been hospitalized for pneumonia and kidney problems, and likely
died from a blood clot that moved late Thursday from his lungs to his
heart, said Morganroth.
According to Kevorkian's wishes, there will be no autopsy. Funeral
arrangements and burial will be private, Morganroth said.
The former Oakland County pathologist built his first suicide machine
in 1989 to let patients throw a switch to kill themselves. He escaped
legislators' efforts to rein him in and prevailed in four trials on
various criminal charges, including murder, with the help of his
lawyer and friend, Geoffrey Fieger.
"History will look very favorably upon Dr. Jack Kevorkian," said
Fieger, who defended him on many of his assisted suicide cases.
The first person Kevorkian helped commit suicide was Janet Adkins, a
54-year-old Alzheimer's patient from Portland, Ore.
She died June 4, 1990, in the back of Kevorkian's Volkswagen bus,
parked in Groveland Park near Holly. Adkins had told Kevorkian she
could no longer play the piano or remember the names of her sons and
did not want to live that way.
Longtime friend Judy Humiston said Adkins saw Kevorkian as "the
perfect solution to her problem."
"She was very adamant that she wanted to end her life," Humiston said.
"She felt there was no sense having a body walking around when she
wasn't really inside."
Kevorkian launched an important debate on end-of-life rights, she
said. "What he did was get people to stop and think about this. He
brought up a very serious social problem that needed to be looked at."
Legislators frustrated
Frustrated officials could find no law preventing Kevorkian from
helping others kill themselves. He ignored the revocation of his
medical license and an injunction to stop. Courts overturned
legislation to ban the practice.
Over the next eight years, the short, gaunt doctor with big glasses
and a trademark crew cut kept providing lethal gas and chemicals to
those whom he considered terminally ill and desired an end to their
suffering.
Kevorkian supporters viewed his work as a blessing.
"He certainly helped people at the end of their lives avoid a lot of
pain and misery," said Stanley David Ball. His father, Stanley Ball,
died with Kevorkian's help on Feb. 4, 1993, at age 82 in Ball's
Leland, Mich., home.
The same day at Ball's home, Kevorkian helped Mary Biernat, 73, a
cancer patient from Indiana, commit suicide.
The older Ball, an ex-farmer and agricultural agent, sought
Kevorkian's help after struggling with pancreatic cancer and
blindness.
"He had a great life and didn't want to finish it off the way the
disease took people," his son said. His dad "danced a jig" when
Kevorkian agreed to come, the son added. "He was his old wonderful,
good-natured self. My hat's off to Jack Kevorkian. He saved my father
a lot of trouble."
Dared prosecutors
Cocky and combative, Kevorkian publicly announced the assisted
suicides and promoted what he saw as a need for a national recognition
of death rights. By his actions, Kevorkian dared prosecutors to charge
him and forced politicians and the public to wrestle with the conflict
between compassion and moral implications.
Kevorkian continued to push the envelope and was found guilty in 1999
of second-degree murder after administering a lethal injection to
Thomas Youk of Waterford Township, who had Lou Gehrig's disease.
The September 1998 incident was videotaped and replayed on CBS' "60 Minutes."
"He wanted to move on in a dignified way, and slip away in peace,"
said Terry Youk, Thomas Youk's brother.
Kevorkian was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison and was
incarcerated for eight years, until his release in 2007.
Jessica Cooper believes Kevorkian, who went on a 19-day hunger strike
while locked up in 1993, wanted to be sent to prison for Youk's death
to generate more national attention. Cooper, now Oakland County
prosecutor, presided over Kevorkian's 1999 trial and sentenced him to
the maximum prison term.
"I spent an inordinate amount of time advising him of his
constitutional right to counsel and how he would have been better
served," Cooper said. "I don't know whether he wanted to be martyred,
but I got that feeling."
But Morganroth said that was only partially the case. "The judge was
unaware of the disagreement he had had with the two young lawyers who
volunteered to help him," he said. "He came to me at the end and I
took over on the last day of trial, but it was too late."
Terry Youk said he saw Kevorkian as "unwavering in his devotion to
seeing that people had rights available for them when they were
terminally ill.
"He really gave his life to fight for that right for people," he said.
Ballot initiative fails
Kevorkian's conviction ended nearly a decade in the spotlight, and the
right-to-die movement sputtered. More than a decade after his last
assisted suicide, the practice is legal only in Oregon, Washington and
Montana.
Two months after Kevorkian fatally injected Youk, Michigan voters
overwhelmingly rejected legalizing assisted suicide in November 1998.
"In terms of getting the problem and possible solutions out to the
general public, he achieved a great deal," said Derek Humphry, who
founded the Hemlock Society, which supported assisted suicide. "On the
other hand, he set us back in terms of the medical profession. ... I
wish he had been a bit more diplomatic."
Kevorkian's push for what he considered compassionate end-of-life care
grew out of his early experiences in medicine. The son of Armenian
refugees from World War I, he was born in Pontiac in 1928. He
graduated from the University of Michigan's medical school in 1952
with a specialty in pathology, the study of death and disease.
During his internship at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Kevorkian
said a woman dying of cancer helped spark his later work. In his 1991
book, "Prescription: Medicide, The Goodness of Planned Death," he said
the woman seemed "as though she were pleading for help and death at
the same time." The incident convinced him physician-assisted suicide
was ethical and proper.
In a presentation in Washington, D.C., in 1958, Kevorkian called for
medical experimentation on willing death row inmates. Officials at
U-M, where he then worked, were appalled.
>From 1961-66, Kevorkian occasionally transfused cadaver blood into
patients at Pontiac General Hospital. He wrote about it in a medical
journal, which again thrust him into the spotlight. He argued Soviets
did it in World War II to save the wounded.
Kevorkian's story was retold last year in an HBO movie, "You Don't
Know Jack: The Life and Deaths of Jack Kevorkian," starring Al Pacino.
When asked about the right-to-die debate at a Detroit premiere,
Kevorkian adamantly defended his actions. "This is an ethical
practice," he said. "One that doctors should be able to practice
without fear. Once something is declared ethical it is covered by law.
Not religion or politicians."
He forced change
The man who convicted Kevorkian, former Oakland County Prosecutor
David Gorcyca, told the Associated Press on Friday that he always
assumed the man would take his own life.
Opponents had accused Kevorkian of pushing to legalize euthanasia, and
said many he helped die weren't sick.
Burke Balch, director of the National Right to Life's Robert Powell
Center for Medical Ethics, said Friday: "While some euthanasia
advocates have sought to distance themselves from his bizarre
positions and tactics, his tragic legacy illustrates the dangers to
the most vulnerable when compassionate, humane responses to depression
or disability are replaced with death as an acceptable final
solution."
Cooper, who sentenced Kevorkian, said: "I did what the law required."
But she also said Kevorkian's radical advocacy resulted in practical
changes in how society deals with end-of-life issues.
"He brought to the forefront end-of-life issues," she said. "Those
were not things that were discussed publicly before. That debate
continues in medical schools and on Main Street, but I think the
debate he stirred resulted in the growth and greater acceptance of
hospice care and greater opportunity for death with dignity. I don't
know if that was his intended effect or a fortunate side effect, but
that is what occurred in Michigan."
Morganroth said Kevorkian was pleased with the greater emphasis on
hospice care that followed his efforts, but he wanted to see more.
"He felt end-of-life was a medical procedure that should be the
responsibility of doctors," Morganroth said. "The debate he caused
resulted in the increase in the amount of morphine hospice is allowed
to give, but he never really saw that as death with dignity."
Kevorkian wanted to see the medical profession adopt his methods, by
forming panels to professionally evaluate the pain, suffering and
wishes of a patient, and then meeting the patient's request to end
life, Morganroth said.
"He looked at factors, medical history, psychiatric evaluations,
whether the person was terminal, and in the final case, whether the
person was even able to do it themselves," Morganroth said. "He took
130 cases, but he had 620 applications. He turned down four out of
five. He believed this is the direction that medicine will eventually
take."
Turn for the worse
Morganroth said he and Kevorkian spoke as late as Thursday afternoon
about his rehabilitation and a book signing tour that was to start
later this month in Detroit and include stops in New York and Florida.
Kevorkian had published a book titled "When the People Bubble Popped,"
about overpopulation, and another containing copies of his limericks,
music and art. Many of his paintings and drawings are in the Armenian
Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Mass.
Morganroth said complications set in about 10:30 p.m. A niece, Ava
Janus of Troy, joined him.
"The head nurse was stroking his forehead. She had asked him what kind
of music he liked and she found Bach on an Internet station,"
Morganroth said. "The doctors and nurses couldn't have been nicer or
treated him with more respect."
http://www.detnews.com/article/20110604/METRO/106040339/1031/Jack-Kevorkian-forced-nation-to-confront-right-to-die
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress