A Demented Doctor Of Death

National Review Online: Jack Kevorkian, Compassionate Eccentric? The Evidence Paints A Darker Portrait

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Wesley J. Smith.

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Jack Kevorkian was released from prison Friday. Don’t expect Dr. Death to keep a low profile. He is already scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes, where he will be interviewed by euthanasia proponent Mike Wallace. After that, the rest of the media is likely to extravagantly tout Kevorkian as the compassionate, if eccentric, retired doctor who helped desperate, terminally ill people put themselves out of their misery.

In actuality, most of Kevorkian's "patients" were not terminally ill, but disabled and depressed. Several weren't even sick, according to their autopsies. Moreover, Kevorkian never attempted to treat any of the 130 or so persons who traveled to Michigan to be hooked up to his suicide machines to die either by drug overdose or carbon monoxide poisoning.

And as for compassion — forget about it. Kevorkian was never in the killing business to alleviate unbearable suffering. Indeed, over the course of decades he repeatedly explained his ultimate goals in professional journals and in his 1991 book, Prescription Medicide. As Jack Kevorkian articulately expresses it himself, compassion had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Kevorkian’s adulthood obsession has been to perform live human experimentation on people he was killing. His first targets were condemned prisoners. Indeed, as far back as 1959, Kevorkian wrote in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminal Political Science:

Capital punishment as it exists today offers a golden opportunity to break… limits [on human experimentation] by introducing into the situation an involuntary factor without destroying the necessary safeguard of consent. I propose that a prisoner condemned to death by due process of law be allowed to submit, by his own free choice, to medical experimentation under complete anesthesia (at the time appointed for administering the penalty) as a form of execution in lieu of conventional methods.

Twenty-five years later, Kevorkian continued advocating experimenting on condemned prisoners, which, in light of the advances in organ transplant medicine, he began to couple with calls to use executed prisoners as organ donors. In the October 1984 edition of MD, Kevorkian published "Dr. Guillotine's Example," in which he asserted:

Of course, capital punishment has always been rationalized as being "retribution" — allowing the condemned to "pay" with their lives. What nonsense! Payment means transfer of value. With execution there is no such thing; there is only total loss — and, of course, vengeance.

That no longer need be true. The fortuitous convergence of lethal injection and of our incredible success with organ transplantation promises to validate at least the erstwhile repayment. Many of the more than 1,200 men and women now crowding our states’ death rows are eager to suffer more meaningful death by donating vital organs to dying patients…Here finally, we have the opportunity to extract true payment — literal transfer of life from the condemned to the dying.

Meanwhile, Kevorkian was still obsessing about human experimentation. Writing in 1985 in the Journal of the National Medical Association, Kevorkian sought to wiggle out of the Nuremberg Code’s ethical rules for human experimentation, writing:

Postwar analysis of Nazi experimentation on human beings seems to have been so excruciating that it blinded the civilized world to a very important point in the formulation of the Nuremberg Code. Nowhere in the code is there any reference to experimentation (under anesthesia) on those who chose and desire it as an act of atonement when condemned to death by due process of peacetime jurisprudence…In the United States where death rows are once again becoming over populated, all condemned persons should be allowed to choose to submit to experimentation, or to organ donation, under strictly controlled anesthesia before ultimate death by lethal thiopental injection.

By 1986, Kevorkian had expanded his advocacy for human experimentation beyond the condemned to people with serious medical problems, disabilities, and even the depressed. Thus, writing in a 1986 edition of Medicine and Law, Kevorkian asserted:

The so-called Nuremberg Code and all its derivatives completely ignore the extraordinary opportunities for terminal experimentation on humans facing imminent and inevitable death...[including] the extraction of medical benefit from the process of judicial execution from those dying of irremediable illness or trauma and from suicide mandated by inflexible religious or philosophical principles or by irrevocable personal choice. Other potential subjects include comatose, brain dead, or totally incapacitated individuals as well as live fetuses in or out of the womb.

Toward gaining license to personally experiment on living human bodies, as he described in Prescription Medicide, Kevorkian traveled the country visiting prisons, seeking access to condemned prisoners upon whom he wanted license to practice what he now called "obitiatry," by which he meant human experimentation coupled with termination of the subject’s life. "No serious experiment on an anesthetized condemned person can be too ‘silly’ or ‘impractical,’" he wrote on page 114. Nor did he believe that human experimentation ought to be limited to doctors, but could include "paraprofessionals" and "qualified lay individuals." His personal desire, as stated on page 34, was to "study all parts of the living brain" (Kevorkian’s emphasis).

[utena-2009]

And another thing - the right-wing economists have a vested interest in prolonging suffering, because that leads to more money for hospitals and private hospices.

So if they have their way, perhaps one day we won't be allowed to refuse or stop treatment, which would lead to more profits and more suffering. No wonder these people killed the electric car.

[utena-2009]

Anyone who says 'You don't need a doctor to commit suicide. Just do it yourself' is essentially saying 'You don't need a doctor to perform an abortion. Just do it yourself.'

Such an attitude is callous and inhumane. Why should people be limited to jumping in front of a train, off a building, shooting themselves, cutting their wrists, bringing a toaster into the bath, or a combination of these methods, among many others, to kill themselves?.

Now, they certainly can't tell their family or friends about their plans, because that could leave them open to charges: 'Why didn't you stop them?' And when they come back and see their loved one with a plastic bag over their head, or blood all over the room, they are shocked and scarred, possibly for life. And on top of this, they can't even *be* with their loved one during their final moments.

[utena-2009]

In case you're wondering. Wesley opposes assisted suicide because it denies people like him the opportunity to be 'compassionate.' What a crock! Keeping people alive for someone else's sole benefit is the epitome of selfishness.

[grumpas]

The neo-con nuts are against suicide because it goes against their staid religious belief's! Let's face it, religion rules this country! Or at least, when religious people are looking it does. I have little doubts one day abortion will become illegal to because it goes against their moral code! But, nothing else in the line of corruption and immoral behavior goes against it! I will be glad when American's grow up and move past their need for superstitious belief's into the light of the real world!

[naturaltwo]

It is clear this writer is as twisted as Jack. Obviously he has not visited or spent time with the terminally ill.

May he experience such a illness, full of pain, and be treated by the current medical establishment which did not even believe in washing its hands.

Instead of bashing why does not the writer take on the serious issues? No money it for the Pharisee.

[shanev137]

I'm so glad Kevorkian is out of jail.

The guy needs to be given a medal and promoted to sainthood for helping so many people.

[frb01]

At the time we all knew he was different and he probably took some liberties and helped people die who shouldn't have. He is not the perfect messenger, but in any case we need to look at the message because we do a very poor job handling terminal situations in this country. Proper pain management and medical guidance is a place to start. Having watched a parent die by inches, and flop around in bed during his last days because they wouldn't or couldn't treat his pain is something that I will never forget.

Whether or nor the allegations in this article are fair or accurate, I have always been suspicious of Kervorkian's motives. He has always struck me as morbidly obsessed with death...perhaps ghoul is more like it!

[johnshaft4]

We frequently read about botched, incompetent State executions. Perhaps Dr. Jack could contract with the States for his competent "services".

[bmadeline-2009]

You guys are so stupid and scary. If you don't need Dr. K's services, don't use them. But it's none of your business what someone else might need to do in there lives. He helped people end torment when invited to do so. You right wing nutbirds like killing people in war or frying them in the electric chair. All against their will.

[gkc99]

"A Demented Doctor Of Death"?

NRO wrong again! Neither Pres. Bushit nor VP Darth Chickenshit is a Doctor!

Typical NRO misinformation.

[myidoncbs]

This is yellow jounalism at its "best".