Setting the record straight about Jack
The following via email from Steven Drake of Not Dead Yet:
In 1993, Jack Kevorkian told Time Magazine, “If they will allow themselves to be strapped to a wheelchair for 72 hours so they can't move, and they are catheterized and they are placed on the toilet and fed and bathed. Then they can sit in a chair and debate with me."
Kevorkian is talking about us – we're some of the people who were here throughout his trial and conviction for the murder of Thomas Youk. Many of us have similar conditions to people – especially women – who make up the bulk of Kevorkian's body count. We have significant disabilities and chronic conditions.
Given the recent press coverage, this might surprise you, since Mike Wallace and Kevorkian only referenced “terminally ill” people on Sunday night. The Associated Press and the New York Times have been describing his body count this way as well.
They're wrong. In 1997, the Detroit Free Press documented the numbers of non-terminally ill people who died in his hands in the series “The Suicide Machine.” This was reaffirmed later when the results of a study were published in 2000 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The press hasn't played into such blatant misinformation in such a big way since they gave the Bush Administration a “pass” on its suggestions that Saddam Hussein was responsible in some way for 9/11.
Jack evaded us at his trial – living up to his word has never been a strong point with him. We're here now – to challenge him, his allies, and the press who keep passing off their lies and misinformation.
Unlike those who found, or were taken to, Kevorkian, unlike those who got death instead of the real supports they could have used to rebuild their lives as disabled people – we’re Not Dead Yet, and we’re here to set the record straight.
Some links:
1993 Time issue with Kevorkian on cover. Table of contents here.
Detroit Free Press coverage of Kevorkian. Scroll down for "The Suicide Machine" series that documents the many people Kevorkian killed who were disabled, not terminally ill.
7 comments:
I guess I agree and disagree - I agree that disable people should not be listed as "terminally ill" though many disabilities DO cut decades off a person's life (MS is down to -7 years). On the other hand, I don't understand why choosing the right to die isn't allowed - I mean, just because someone with (insert here) choose to suicide doesn't mean all people with that should kill themselves.
I have made mental assessments of when I should seriously consider suicide, you might say I have planned it as has my AB partner should her condition change. I agree that if things were different in society maybe that line would be further along, but things aren't. I agree that people have it worse or the same and go on, often making significant differences in society and/or those around them. However, why should suicide be a privilage of the Able bodied? No one says that a farmer whose lifelihood is wiped out and kills themselves is perpetuating societal persecution against farmers?
You HAVE the right to off yourself, the rub is having other people assist you, especially doctors. THAT is murder.
Why is that so hard to understand?
"the rub is having other people assist you, especially doctors. THAT is murder."
What other option does someone who is critically disabled and terminally ill have? There are patients who cannot lift a finger, let alone collect materials and means to take their own life. That is why, as Kevorkian mentions, the state of Oregon in the US and nations such as the Netherlands, where purportedly voluntary 'assisted' suicide is legal, do not make the cut. The reason simply is because in these places, for the act to be legal, the patients need to carry out the act themselves (i.e. with their own hands), be it popping a pill or taking an injection. This effectively cuts off a very large group of the potential benficiaries of euthanasia by consent, who are devastatingly physically disabled. Moreover, Kevorkian did not participate in any assisted suicides where a psychiatric evaluation of the patient was not done. For all of his patients, it was proved beyond doubt that the decision was taken by the patient alone, and that it was taken with the mental faculties intact and capable of taking rational decisions.
I don't think people should have the right to kill themselves.
I've been seriously depressed and wanting to die. I'm able-bodied, therefore I could kill myself, and I've come close (but never made a serious attempt). But then things get better. As long as you're alive, you can find some value in life. Even a person who is being tortured in some prison somewhere can find some small amount of joy, and even a severe disability is much better than that.
Besides, much of the misery of being disabled is not due to the disability, but society's attitudes. I've recently had a worsening of my asthma. If I thought it was a horrible thing to need help from other people, I'd find this a lot harder to cope with that I currently do. Most people are descriminatory towards disability. If they become disabled, their attitudes pose a barrier to happiness, but one they can overcome.
Besides, the whole thing is a double standard. The doctors who advocate assisted suicide, chances are most of them would save an able-bodied person from a suicide attempt. This is about disabled people being considered better off dead.
Kevorkian is a serial killer. He was just smart enough to find lots of people to kill that nobody cares about.
For one, Judith Curran had three different restraining orders against her head-tripping psychiatrist husband, who later took her to be murdered by Kevorkian. I had never read this detail in the mainstream news, I had to read this fact in an in-depth article in the Atlantic Monthly. I haven't seen any feminist groups address that fact. There are other similarly-situated old women among his homicides...one was diagnosed with Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. (!!!) I guess they thought a simple hysterectomy was too good for her, huh? Kill the bitch!
Divorce = can't get the insurance money. Most of Kevorkian's murders were CHRONICALLY ILL WOMEN, ushered quickly into death by greedy husbands.
The Atlantic Monthly article also talked about how obsessed with death Kevorkian has been his whole life, waiting for people in hospitals to die so he could "look into their eyes at the moment of death." He also carved up a body (after one of his homicides) and took the kidneys out, leaving it parked in a car by a hospital ER entrance. Oh yeah, I call that death with dignity all right!
He is a common GHOUL. I can't believe anyone still defends him. If I believed in capital punishment, I'd strap him to the gurney, first thing.
He is a sociopath...there's a piece missing in his brain that allowed him to see his "patient's" as objects of experimentation. A dangerous former loose cannon of a "doctor."
He is (thankfully) still legally barred from doing any such thing again, according to Wikipedia.
He is a sociopath. I think it would be entirely possible to be in favor of assisted suicide and see that Kevorkian is sociopathic, too. Actually, that's the minimum I would expect of rational citizens that take the time to get the info and develop an opinion on assisted suicide.
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