Plan B Forum

Report: Dr. Jack Kevorkian dead at 83
June 3rd, 2011
08:49 AM ET
Dr. Jack Kevorkian has died at the age of 83, according the Detroit Free Press, who spoke with his lawyer.

Kevorkian died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and heart problems, attorney Mayer Morganroth told the newspaper.

Morganroth said it appears Kevorkian suffered a pulmonary thrombosis when a blood clot from his leg broke free and lodged in his heart. With Kevorkian were his niece Ava Janus and Morganroth.

“It was peaceful," Morganroth told the paper. "He didn’t feel a thing."

Kevorkian was known as "Dr. Death" because of his time spent as an assisted-suicide advocate.

But it is important to remember some forgotten facts about how he went about his business:

1.Most of the People Who Died Under Kevorkian's Direction Were Not Terminally Ill

According to a December 2000 study in The New England Journal of Medicine, only 25 percent were terminally ill, and 7 percent showed no signs of physical illness at all. Thirteen percent had symptoms of clinical depression, and a disproportionate number were divorced, widowed or never married.

The study covered about half of Kevorkian's known "patients" between 1990 and 1998 -- those who were autopsied by the Oakland County, Mich., medical examiner's office -- but there is no reason to believe the numbers would change if all of the people he serviced were included. A 2001 study in The Gerontologist reached similar conclusions. Click here to read the full study.

2. An Astounding 71 Percent of Those Who Died Under Kevorkian's Direction Were Women

The same study revealed this startling, and disturbing, gender discrepancy in Kevorkian's work. Feminist public-health scholars have said that the reason is simple: Men in our society have an expectation that they will be cared for -- by women, by the system, by their greater wealth.

Older women are far more likely to be alone, impoverished, suffering from depression, and generally devalued by our society. Several of the women who went to Kevorkian explained themselves using the exact same words: They "did not want to be a burden." In some ways, there is nothing more worthless in American society than a sick old woman. It is likely that many of the women who sought Kevorkian out with such desperation had internalized that skewed value system.

3. Kevorkian Had No Legitimate Screening System, and Refused All Proposals to Regularize His Procedures

He was a law unto himself. And that arrogance led to a plain and terrible fact: People died under his direction who needed help, legal and psychiatric help -- not poison. In 1997, The Detroit Free Press investigated and profiled many of those who died under Kevorkian's direction. Several women were victims of domestic violence. Many of his patients were depressed at a recent diagnosis of a challenging disease -- multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, cancer. Others had very treatable conditions: diabetes, back pain, arthritis.

And then there was the case of the woman who traveled to Michigan to die, accompanied by her encouraging husband. He remarried a few weeks later.

To millions of Americans, Jack Kevorkian was a crusader and a champion of human rights.

But Kevorkian's critics have often pointed to these facts as evidence that his motives were not pure and his methods deeply flawed. They also note that over the course of his career, he seemed obsessed with death, painted gruesome scenes using human blood, and that, as a pathologist, he had never really treated patients prior to helping them die.[he also did a "study" on the facial expressions of corpses]

To these critics -- in the disabled community, among some feminists and among many pro-life Christians -- the final verdict on this controversial man is the one pronounced by former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Jack Kevorkian, he said, was "America's most successful serial killer."

And, long ago, he lost the right to be called "doctor." Michigan pulled his state medical license in 1991 and his California license was revoked two years later.

Lord Jim wrote:Good riddance.

NOT allowing people who are terminally ill and in constant pain to end their own lives is wrong.

Of course, a good argument could probably be made that every single person he helped to die would have killed themselves in a much messier way and he was justified in assisting them.

Lord Jim wrote: Well Joe, I think a much stronger case could be made that most of those people, if they had gotten the right kind of help, rather than falling into manipulative clutches of Dr. Death, would never have committed suicide at all.

Lord Jim wrote:

Of course, a good argument could probably be made that every single person he helped to die would have killed themselves in a much messier way and he was justified in assisting them.

Well Joe, I think a much stronger case could be made that most of those people, if they had gotten the right kind of help, rather than falling into manipulative clutches of Dr. Death, would never have committed suicide at all.
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dales wrote:What about this guy?