Jack Kevorkian
Dr. Jack Kevorkian (born May 26, 1928) is a controversial American medical doctor. He is famous for advocating the patient's "right to die" and assisting in the suicides of people who are terminally ill.
Kevorkian helped over 100 people die through assisted suicides during the 1990s. In 1998, he allowed 60 Minutes to broadcast the death of one of his patients. Following this, Kevorkian was charged with second-degree murder and convicted. He is currently in prison in Michigan, serving a 10 to 25 year sentence. He will become eligible for parole in 2007.
In the early 1980s he published numerous articles in the German journal Medicine and Law outlining his ideas on euthanasia and ethics. In 1987 he started advertising in Detroit papers as a "physician consultant" for "death counseling". In 1988 Kevorkian's article, "The Last Fearsome Taboo: Medical Aspects of Planned Death," was published in Medicine and Law. In it, he outlined his proposed system of planned deaths in suicide clinics, including medical experimentation on patients.
In 1988 he built his "suicide machine" using $30 worth of scrap parts scrounged from garage sales and hardware stores, on the kitchen table of his Royal Oak, Michigan, apartment. On June 4, 1990, he assisted in his first suicide: Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old woman from Portland, Oregon, with Alzheimer's disease. Her death in the machine occurred in Kevorkian's 1968 Volkswagen van in Groveland Oaks Park near Holly, Michigan.
Dr. Kevorkian's assisted suicides occurred from 1990 to 1998. In each case, he hooked the individual up to a machine he created to facilitate death. After being hooked up, the client would push a button that would release the drugs or chemicals that would end his or her life. Two such assisted suicides were by means of a lethal injection machine, which Kevorkian called a "Mercitron", and the rest were by machines that would kill the client by means of a gas mask fed by a canister of carbon monoxide.
Other patients
October 23, 1991: Marjorie Wantz, a 58-year-old Sodus, Michigan, woman with pelvic pain, and Sherry Miller, a 43-year-old Roseville, Michigan, woman with multiple sclerosis. The deaths occur at a rented state park cabin near Lake Orion, Michigan. Wantz dies from the suicide machine's lethal drugs, Miller from carbon monoxide poisoning inhaled through a face mask.
May 15,1992: Susan Williams, a 52-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis, dies from carbon monoxide poisoning in her home in Clawson, Michigan.
September 26, 1992: Lois Hawes, 52, a Warren, Michigan, woman with lung and brain cancer, dies from carbon monoxide poisoning at the home of Kevorkian's assistant Neal Nicol in Waterford Township, Michigan.
November 26, 1994: Hours after Michigan's ban on assisted suicide expires, 72-year-old Margaret Garrish dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in her home in Royal Oak. She had arthritis and osteoporosis. Kevorkian is not present when police arrive.
June 26, 1995: Kevorkian opens a "suicide clinic" in an office in Springfield Township, Michigan. Erika Garcellano, a 60-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, woman with ALS, is the first client.
Altogether, Kevorkian reportedly helped over 100 people to end their lives, the vast majority of them occurring between 1996 and 1998.
Prison
On March 26, 1999, a jury in Michigan found Dr. Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder and delivery of a controlled substance, for administering a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, an ALS sufferer, on September 17, 1998. This was different than most of his previous cases in that he actively assisted in the suicide by performing the injection. The incident had been videotaped and aired on the November 22, 1998 edition of 60 Minutes. On April 13, 1999, Kevorkian was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2007. In an MSNBC interview on September 29, 2005, Kevorkian indicated that if he is granted parole, he would not resume directly helping people die, but restrict himself to campaigning to have the law changed.
Books
- Prescription-Medicide : the goodness of planned death (Prometheus Books, 1991) (ISBN 0879756772)