Jack Kevorkian is a medical doctor who graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School. He believed in the right of physicians assisted suicide and participated many times in helping people achieve that. He claimed to have assisted around 130 people, although all of his patients did take the final action when essentially committing suicide. In the media Kevorkian was referred to “Dr. Death.” He always said, “dying is not a crime.” In 1999, Kevorkian was tried for his role in a case of voluntary euthanasia, he was convicted of second degree murder and served eight years under a 10-25 year sentence. In 1987, Kevorkian started advertising in the Detroit newspaper as a physician’s consultant of “Death Counseling”
His first public assisted suicide was Janet Akins and 54 year old suffering from Alzheimer’s. Charges were dropped about a year later due to no laws in the state of Michigan prohibiting physician’s assisted suicide. In 1991, Michigan revoked Kevorkian’s medical license and was no longer allowed to practice any type of medicine. Between 1990 and 1998 is when he assisted 130 people with their suicide. Kevorkian only assisted by connecting the patient with his personally made euthanasia machine.
Many Americans and others around the globe criticized Kevorkian’s work. According to a report from Detroit Free Press, 60% of patients who committed suicide with help of Jack Kevorkian were not terminally ill.
On June 14 2010, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta sat down with Dr. Jack Kevorkian for a face to face interview. Kevorkian began the interview by saying the worst most single moment of his life was the day he was born. Throughout the interview Kevorkian made it clear that he had no regrets in what he participated in.
Many Americans see it both ways some see as if this was the worst thing that someone could do, because it was helping some one die, someone who had many loved ones and ones that cared about them that wouldn’t want to see their family members or friends die especially when in some cases they weren’t even terminally ill. Others are different, some may believe that if that is what a person truly wants then they should have the power to make that decision.
I believe that it depends on the situation and how much pain that the person is truly in. If a person has absolutely nothing wrong with them then I don’t think that they should have a choice to commit suicide or get help with committing it. Before they even think about choosing to be involved in physician’s assisted suicide I think they need to be diagnosed with something much more serious than just chronic pain. Now if a person were to be suffering from Alzheimer’s at an old age then maybe it would be okay for a person to think about assisted suicide. I do agree that if a person wants to die it is their own feelings and that’s what they want to do, but they need to think about the people who love them and how this would affect them. Kevorkian shouldn’t have done what he did, but he believed that people should have the choice to die and to some people that is very unnecessary.
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