Doctor murders disabled man to harvest organs

This story comes out of central California:

San Luis Obispo County prosecutors have charged a transplant surgeon with prescribing excessive drugs to a disabled patient to hasten his death and harvest his organs.

Here are the Facts First:

Ruben Navarro of San Luis Obispo was admitted to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center on January 29th, 2006.

The 26-year-old was placed on life support and identified as a potential organ donor.

In February, California transplant donor network Doctor Hootan Roozrokh came to San Luis Obispo to procure Navarro's organs.

The San Francisco surgeon is facing three separate felony charges in connection with the death of Rueben Navarro.

Navarro was a patient of a local skilled nursing facility when he suffered respiratory and cardiac arrest.

He was taken to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center where doctors determined he had minimal brain function.

However, he was not declared brain dead.

The San Luis Obispo County district attorney's office alleges that when Dr. Roozrokh arrived at Sierra Vista he gave Navarro medications including morphine and Ativan to speed up his death.

I hear this story will be covered on CNN's Nancy Grace show this evening. (Update: Show transcript is here.)

Note that my headline above is not what the news link declares. The criminal charges against the doctor currently include "mistreatment of a dependent, severely disabled adult" and "administering a harmful substance and unlawful controlled substance prescription." But really, the sum of and point of the charges is that the man was killed so the transplant surgery could begin.

Here's a link to a UC-Berkeley site called Organs Watch that tracks worldwide trafficking and abuse.

Olmstead Anniversary and the "right to die"

Today, June 22, 2007, is the eighth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. LC and EW. LC and EW are Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, two women in Georgia who had spent most of their lives in institutions because of disabilities, despite it having been determined that they were each capable of living in a much freer environment. For disabled people, the Olmstead decision is comparable to Brown v. Board of Education in the way it has legally declared that segregation is an unacceptable public policy. And Olmstead was only possible because of the ADA.

Elaine Wilson died in 2004. Here, from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution article published at the time of her death:

In 2000, [U.S. District Court] Judge Shoob accepted a settlement that the state would guarantee the women community-based housing, training programs and employment.

At that hearing, Ms. Wilson testified to Judge Shoob: "When I was in the institution, I felt like I was in a little box and there was no way out."

Of the plaintiffs' testimonies, Judge Shoob said: "I was amazed. They were both so articulate. At a party after the hearing, they gave a talk about how it felt to take care of themselves and what a wonderful life they were leading. I went up on the podium and hugged each one of them. I'd never done that before."

Ms. Wilson had been shunted among institutions and shelters from age 15 and subjected to shock treatment and psychotropic drugs "that knocked her out and ruined her kidneys," said her mother, Jackie Edelstein of Atlanta.

"When I first met Elaine in 1999, it was very hard to see someone with a valuable talent," said Harriet Harris of Lithonia, executive director of Circle of Support Inc., which provided Ms. Wilson with caretakers. "She was very angry and defensive, having spent so many years fighting for survival. Like someone who had been wounded over and over, it was very hard to trust anyone."

Once Ms. Wilson was placed with a caretaker and given independence, her life changed dramatically.

"She blossomed," said Legal Aid attorney Sue Jamieson of Atlanta, who took on the case in 1995. "She took an interest in cooking and church and her personal appearance. She wanted to do advocacy for other people so [she] acquired training in presenting workshops and giving speeches.

"She developed a PowerPoint presentation that described her life. When I heard it, I was extremely moved. I had no idea that Elaine had acquired that level of sophistication. She had exploited her natural skills and abilities to a degree I would never have believed possible. It makes you wonder how many other people like Elaine are out there."

In 2004, on the fifth anniversary of Olmstead, activist Zen Garcia noted:

Olmstead v. LC & EW began as a civil rights case for two women who desired life in the community, but it ended up being a case representing the rights of all people, symbolizing to many of us the decades of legal government segregation and civil rights abuse.

We learned that, at the same time states were fining nursing homes for abuse and neglect, they were giving them bonus for keeping the cost per resident down. This caused an outcry from advocates across the nation.

Since incurring my own disability I had noticed a cycle of misrepresentation that condemned people like myself to nursing home placement. At the time, I was involved with the Georgia Department of Medical Assistance's Long Term Care Advisory Board, and I gave speeches at most of the DMA's Public Outreach Forums, declaring on several occasions that "It is not a lack of money that is the central issue when it comes to long term care, but whether states and corporations have the right to profit at the expense of the people."

Michael Gottesman, a Georgetown University Law Center professor, says it costs less money to provide for mentally disabled people in the community than in an institution. "The evidence is overwhelming in that regard," he insists. "It's politics that explains the states' resistance. It's a combination of the employees in these institutions don't want to lose their jobs, the administrators don't want to lose their kingdoms, and there are still lots of folks out in the community who are happy with continuing to lock these people up and keep them out of sight."

And, of course, Georgia is also where, in 1989, quadriplegic Larry McAfee languished in nursing homes and a hospital ICU for so long that he petitioned the courts for the right to die. Mainstream media mostly leapt on the story of a crip who felt he'd be better off dead, but as history professor and disability activist Paul Longmore writes:

He told Joe Shapiro of U.S. News and World Report that the worst thing about his disabillity was that people treated him as though he was "invisible." He told ABC's Nightline: "If you're a citizen or resident of Georgia and you become ventilator-dependent, you'd better be prepared to become an outcast unwanted by the state." His mother said that he was "thrown around like a bag of rotten potatoes that nobody even wants." "You're looked upon as a second-rate citizen," McAfee told Shapiro. "People say, 'You're using my taxes. You don't deserve to be here. You should hurry up and leave.'" "It gets to the point," he said, "where you realize that this is your life, . . . and in my case, it's not worth pursuing."

Yet, while McAfee petition to die was granted, he lives on. Significantly, the granting of his petition stated that permission for McAfee's ventilator to be turned off so that he would die would not be ruled a suicide, but the natural consequences of his paralyzing injuries many years earlier. This is just how deep the "better dead than disabled" idea runs: Allowing McAfee's wish to die through assistance in flipping a switch would've been legally ruled a natural consequence of a car accident.

But it turns out that being freed from the nursing home made McAfee's life worth living again. (Joseph Shapiro's report of McAfee's adventures is well-covered in his book, No Pity, an excellent, concise and readable account of the history of disabled people in the United States.) As for institutionalization and assisted suicide, the general consensus among disabled folks who speak on this is that being treated like a human being does that -- it makes life livable and worthwhile.


Photo description: The picture is by photographer Tom Olin from a recent ADAPT action in Washington, D.C. A black woman wearing a pink t-shirt solemnly holds a bright orange placard that reads "Real People, Real Choice" while dozens of demonstrators are visible behind her.

Kevorkian's Big Lie

This is written by Diane Coleman, president of disability rights organization Not Dead Yet, from an op-ed in the North Country Gazette:

Every time the courtroom doors opened during Jack Kevorkian’s weeklong trial in 1999, security guards allowed two wheelchair users to enter and sit in designated spaces, as well as three disabled but walking advocates, all representatives of the group Not Dead Yet. We rotated the opportunity to be in the courtroom among about 40 disability activists who came from several states to represent the majority of Kevorkian’s body count, people with non-terminal disabilities.

Kevorkian had been quoted in Time Magazine to say he would love to debate the critics who charge that he is too hasty in deciding who may die. “I will argue with them 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.”

In response, our leaflets simply stated, “We’re here, and we demand the equal protection of the law: Jail Jack.”

Kevorkian claims involvement in over 130 deaths, and it’s been irrefutably documented in such respected publications as the New England Journal of Medicine that over 70% were not terminally ill, and 70% were women. Many disability rights advocates view him as a serial killer of people with disabilities.

Read the rest here.

Why is this important now? Because Kevorkian was recently released from jail and the misinformation about his actions and motives continues.

I do believe reasonable people can disagree about the issue of assisted suicide, provided they understand fully the inequality of providing the "freedom to die" for a class of people routinely denied basic freedoms to live. But Kevorkian has no place being named a hero for his actions.

Cross-posted at Echidne of the Snakes

Slumgullion #39 -- The Jack's Back Edition

Yes, some coverage of Kevorkian's release and the assisted suicide debate:

Colleen Carol Campbell at the Ethics and Public Policy Center -- "Disturbing Lessons from the Case of Dr. Death":

In America, the "futile care theory" that says resources should not be wasted on patients with poor prognoses is gaining traction; the theory's applications can be deadly. In 2005, 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre had been hospitalized for only eight days when her Massachusetts state custodians began fighting to remove her ventilator and feeding tube. Doctors had diagnosed her condition as a persistent vegetative state, but Poutre recovered before they could euthanize her.

Most Americans believe that the terminally ill should be free to reject excessively burdensome treatments with dubious benefits or unreasonable costs relative to benefits. But laws that propose suicide as a solution to human suffering reinforce the message that the disabled, depressed and severely ill are burdens who can find dignity only in death.

David Kessler at The Huffington Post -- "Paging Dr. Kevorkian":

So I do understand the argument of why not regulate it and make it safe; but, I also remember whenever we haven't been able to achieve something such as when we couldn't go to the moon, we didn't say -- well, we can't do it so let's just blow it up. Or, before we could successfully do heart or kidney transplants we never said not let's keep trying; let's just let them slip away quietly. Our answer should never be, if we can't improve care -- let's find a way to help them die quicker.

At F.R.I.D.A. (Feminist Response In Disability Activism)-- "FRIDA members on Jack Kevorkian":

I've just seen a list of Jack Kevorkian's assisted suicides, and the vast majority of them are women - at least 70% of them. Many of them were not terminally ill. One of the women that he helped to die is Judith Curren - she was 42 and suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. During the weeks before her suicide, she was assaulted by her husband. Perhaps this experience and her despair may help to explain why she wanted to end her life.

I am surprised that the gender element is missing from analyses and commentaries in the press.... Why is it that more disabled and ill women want to die than men? Gender doesn't seem to part of the analysis in the press at all.

Apparently, the National Organization of Women, amongst other feminist organizations, support the availability of assisted suicide. But there are also feminist arguments against it.

Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press -- "A face-to-face with a defiant Dr. Death":

He likened what he had done to a doctor who had to cut off a patient's leg to get rid of cancer. "Unfortunately, the patient must lose a life to end the suffering."

As we spoke, I heard intelligence, self-assurance, even arrogance. What I didn't hear was humanity. He didn't seem to think much of the human race. He likened life to "a tragedy." He quoted famous people saying they wouldn't bring babies into this world. When I said that would wipe out mankind, he said, "What's wrong with that?"

I began to sense a man who was more interested in death than life. Death was his academic passion, and sick patients were part of that academic pursuit, like lab rats.

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.

The Huffington Post: Disability advocates should get over it

I've got some other stuff to do tonight, but wanted to share the link.

Excerpt:

From where I sit, I don't see how compassion in dying has anything to do with disability rights. For those of us who want to offer dignity to those whose pain can no longer be nursed, the fact that our society too often treats the disabled as second-class citizens also is a powerful assault on our humane sensitivities.

Could the real issue for some disability advocates be that ongoing life experiences have convinced you that able-bodied citizens feel you are "in the way," and that right-to-die types have as the ultimate goal more tools to get you, our disabled brothers and sisters, "out of the way?"

While I don't have the life experience to see things from your perspective, I have to tell the disability advocate community that such a mind-set strikes me as a bit paranoid. I liken it to the fear in some minority communities that some forms of contraception are really efforts at medically sanctioned genocide.

Disability advocates, please understand we right-to-die types are not your enemies. We are your friends.

Regarding Kevorkian

Not Dead Yet is demanding that the Associated Press retract and correct a faulty poll that asked the public misleading questions about the parole of convicted murderer Jack Kevorkian. From the press release:

According to the AP, the survey asked the following question:

"Do you think that Michigan doctor Jack Kevorkian should have been jailed for assisting terminally ill people end their own life, or not?"

"This question misinforms the respondent about the nature of the crime Kevorkian was convicted of and also mischaracterizes the health status of the majority of people who died at his hands. As anyone who watched the 60-Minutes telecast knows, Kevorkian directly injected lethal chemicals into Thomas Youk. This is not 'assistance'," says Stephen Drake, Not Dead Yet's research analyst. "Further, the word 'people' is paired with 'terminally ill', indicating that the majority of his body count consisted of people who were close to death." Beginning with the Detroit Free Press series 'The Suicide Machine' in 1997, there is overwhelming documentation that the majority of people who went to Kevorkian had non-lethal chronic conditions and disabilities.

Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet, personally contacted Trevor Thompson, the AP's Manager of News Surveys, to demand a retraction and correction.

"Mr. Thompson eventually agreed the question didn't jive with the facts of Kevorkian's career or conviction but rejected any corrective action after consulting with the D.C. Bureau Chief, Sandy Johnson. Johnson claimed that the story about the poll was accurate, disregarding responsibility for contaminating the poll with a misleading question."

Carol Gill, Ph.D., agrees with the concerns of Not Dead Yet. "All good survey designers know that misleading questions produce invalid results. When participants are asked to respond to inaccurate and confusing items, the result is spoiled data. Unfortunately, this poll contained flawed questions. It's impossible to base sound conclusions on these results." Professor Gill is a research psychologist and associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Drake adds that the refusal of Thompson and Johnson to address the misinformation in the poll is a violation of the AP's public "Statement on Values and Principles," which calls for swift and comprehensive corrective action when it publishes erroneous information.

"This is worse than the usual error," says Drake. "In this case, it created news in the form of a survey and then reported on that fabrication. Instead of simply reporting misinformation, AP has created the information in a way that superficially resembles scientific sampling. It has knowingly polluted the public discussion about an important public policy topic - and the organization is refusing to take responsibility for it."

Chicago columnist Mike Miner on the issue.

And a recent article from the Detroit Free Press stating that pro-assisted suicide activists are desperately trying to distance themselves from Kevorkian and his legacy:

As Jack Kevorkian, 79, prepares to re-enter the national spotlight this week after eight years in prison, assisted-suicide advocates are doing all they can to distance themselves from the man called Dr. Death.

His release from a Michigan prison Friday -- one week before a planned California vote on whether to join Oregon as the only states to allow assisted death for the terminally ill -- could not come at a more critical or inopportune time for the movement, which has worked for years to legalize the practice and shed the ghoulish persona many associate with Kevorkian and his suicide machine.

The article notes that in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal, "Suicides under the law peaked in 2006, with 45 patients choosing to end their lives early."

That's inaccurate. There are no 2007 stats yet, so there's no "peaking." If 2006 has the highest stats, then possibly it's an upwards trend.

Here's a link to the Free Press coverage of Kevorkian over the years. Steven Drake says in comments at the Miner link above:

I've lost count of the number of Michigan journalists who admit there have been problems with accuracy in covering Kevorkian but don't seem particularly troubled by it.

Also, to my knowledge, the disavowal of Kevorkian by other assisted-suicide proponents is only vocal now, after he's been convicted, paroled, and will again have a public microphone. If someone can show me where these people have been speaking stridently against Kevorkian and his methods prior to now, when it's politically expedient to do so, I'd be interested in seeing that.

Is Roger Ebert a disability activist?

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville notes that Roger Ebert has just released a statement in his home paper the Chicago Sun-Times about his fight with cancer and the ravages it has taken upon his body. McEwan calls him a "disability activist" because he details the issues of his physical health and comments that illness is too much hidden in our society:

I’ve long admired his work: the way he critiqued films, his talent for writing about them, and his frank unpretentiousness about the whole process. I respected him as a film critic. I didn’t expect to respect him as a disability activist.

I generally agree with McEwan about the quality of Ebert's reviews. She says:

He’s my go-to reviewer and has been for so many years that I can tell by his reviews whether I’ll like a movie, irrespective of whether he did. I know on what we agree and what we don’t, and he rarely surprises me—and that’s not a complaint.

Until the release of Million Dollar Baby back in 2005, I, too, considered him my premier go-to movie reviewer for the same reasons she states. And I don't discount the public importance of Ebert's recently stating:

I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what?

I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.

…We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my festival.

I appreciate the pictures included in Ebert's report on his health and upcoming film festival too. Like many, I've been wondering how he's doing, and thinking of the grace with which his old partner Gene Siskel kept up work during his own decline from cancer. I suspect disability will be much more in the public eye as celebrity Baby Boomers age and face these same public image challenges.

But. I don't see the specifics of a disability activist that McEwan does in Ebert's announcement. What I see is a man with a very public job who has found himself at the point where he is visibly disabled and must now manage that in his public life. He's outed himself because he had no other choice. If he didn't address it head-on -- as most of us faced with visible disability and a public curiosity that rarely offers privacy for bodily difference are forced to do -- he couldn't get on with the business of movie reviewing.

Now, he did it head-on with a grace and good humor that I admire, and I hope that this will help him ease the public fear and patronization that could make his job as a respected movie critic hard or even impossible. But being left without the privilege of the physical anonymity of the nondisabled does not suddenly make Ebert a disability activist.

Disabled folks will remember our clashes with him about Million Dollar Baby, and how our concerns for the film's gross inaccuracies of quadriplegia were sidelined by the conservative v. liberal debate about the sanctity of life (notice how About.com files this debate under "Parenting Special Needs" in that latest link). Our anger at Baby producer/director/actor Clint Eastwood, a man who has dedicated considerable private energy to dismantling the ADA, was mostly ignored in favor of the battle of Ebert v. Medved.

I was brand new to blogging back then, but I posted about Million Dollar Baby here and here. You can also read about the disability rights issues around the movie in this old op-ed by Not Dead Yet's Diane Coleman, and this press release by NDY:

Not Dead Yet has been joined in condemning the film's "better dead than disabled" message by the National Spinal Cord Injury Association and the American Association of People With Disabilities, the nation's largest nonprofit cross-disability member organization.

Bill Henning, Executive Director of the Boston Center for Independent Living, is concerned about the denial of independent living in the movie. "I'm disappointed, if hardly surprised, that 'Million Dollar Baby' apparently ducks consideration of services that would have enabled Maggie to live a meaningful life. For thirty years we've helped thousands of disabled Massachusetts residents to live and prosper in the community, but Eastwood had to resort to a 'Hollywood ending,' one whose fundamental tragedy is not the actual storyline but its utterly false statement that a disabled life is not worth living."

"Imagine" added Kelly, "if in the boxing scenes, it was obvious that all the punches missed their targets by three feet, yet the characters fell down and suffered injuries anyway. The film would be laughed out of the theaters and disgraced in the academy. Well, The Mayo Clinic reports that there are up to 200,000 people living in the United States with a spinal cord injury, not one of whom seems to have been consulted for the making of this movie. The question is how could audiences and critics not even notice Clint Eastwood's cartoonish, negative depiction of the rehab experience?"

In January of 2005, as the Oscar ceremony from which Baby took home four awards approached, Ebert took aim at protests to the movie and at film reviewer Michael Medved and other conservative commentators for giving spoilers to the film:

In the case of some films, however, even to hint that there is a surprise is to reveal too much. In my review of "Million Dollar Baby," which I consider the best film of 2004, I wrote: "It is a movie about a boxer. What else it is, all it is, how deep it goes, what emotional power it contains, I cannot suggest in this review, because I will not spoil the experience of following this story into the deepest secrets of life and death."

.... The decision of Maggie and her trainer is not a surprise to the readers or listeners of two right-wing commentators, Michael Medved and Rush Limbaugh. They have revealed every secret of the plot. Limbaugh even chortled as he "apologized" for an earlier broadcast. Just as the movie was opening, Medved appeared on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" to describe the plot in great detail. The outcome of the movie does not match their beliefs. They object to it. That is their right. To engage in a campaign to harm the movie for those who may not agree with them is another matter.

I'd like to put aside any arguments about the general and persistent asshattery of Medved, Limbaugh and Robertson here because it's repeatedly taken attention away from the specific concerns of the disability community (on this issue and quite a few others). I want to look at the ableism in the idea that spoiling a movie is shameful behavior.

If the movie's last half had been about a sudden violent rape leading to the main character's death, or if she'd been a woman of color and killed by a racist act, or even if she'd actively committed suicide over despair relating to her working class upbringing, I do not believe Million Dollar Baby would have been hailed primarily as "a boxing movie" with a secret ending too precious to ruin. If Eastwood had not been the powerhouse celebrity behind the film, it would not have had the caché to elicit such need for silence on how the film ends. (If Eastwood had not been involved, the irony wouldn't seem so deadly to those of us who need public ideas about disability to be less about us choosing to die.)

I agree there's special pleasure in seeing a movie for the first time and letting its surprises unfold. And I'll concede that probably Ebert considered it his professional obligation to lobby in favor of that pleasure. But that pleasure does not trump silence when the result is audiences leaving a film with such a dangerous message, sold through misinformation about actual life as a quadriplegic, actual solutions for the challenges associated with it, and no alternative information available to the general public to even learn otherwise.

Ebert himself has occasionally let the issue of accuracy about Catholicism in films be more important than morally-neutral movie reviewing. On the film Stigmata:

It is also not possible, according to leading church authorities, to catch the stigmata from a rosary. It is not a germ or a virus. It comes from within. If it didn't, you could cut up Padre Pio's bath towels and start your own blood drive. "Stigmata" does not know, or care, about the theology involved, and thus becomes peculiarly heretical by confusing the effects of being possessed by Jesus and by Beelzebub.

And a longer excerpt from his review of Priest, which I find has some parallels to what disability activists argue about the inaccuracies in Baby (bolds are mine, but amuse yourself with the language irony in the first bolded sentence):

I am aware that the touchy-feely movement is so well established that no commercial film could seriously argue for celibacy. What I object to is the use of the church as a spice for an otherwise lame story; take away the occupations of the two central characters, and the rest of the film's events would be laid bare as tiresome sexual politics. The most obnoxious scene in the film is the one where the young priest, tortured by the needs of the flesh and by another problem we will soon get to, lectures Christ on the cross: "If you were here, you'd . . ." Well, what? Advise him to go out and get laid? The priest, named Father Greg and played by Linus Roache, picks up Graham (Robert Carlyle) for a night of what he hopes will be anonymous sex, but later Graham recognizes him on the street, and soon they are in love. This is all done by fiat; the two men are not allowed to get to know one another, or to have conversations of any meaning, since the movie is not really about their relationship, but about how backward the church is in opposing it.

Instead of taking the time to explore the sexuality of the two priests in a thoughtful way, "Priest" crams in another plot, this one based on that old chestnut, the inviolable secrecy of the confessional. Father Greg learns while hearing a confession that a young girl is being sexually abused by her father. What to do? Of course (as the filmmakers no doubt learned from Alfred Hitchcock's "I Confess") he cannot break the seal of the confessional - a rule that, for the convenience of the plot, he takes much more seriously than the rules about sex. This dilemma also figures in his anguished monologue to Jesus.

Once again, the church is used as spice. (Can you imagine audiences getting worked up over the confidential nature of a lawyer-client or a doctor-patient relationship?) But here the movie leaves a hole wide enough to run a cathedral through. The girl's father confronts the priest in the confessional, threatens him, and tells the priest he plans to keep right on with his evil practice (we don't simply have a child abuser here, but a spokesman for incest).

What the film fails to realize is that this conversation is not protected by the sacramental seal because the sinner makes it absolutely clear he is not asking forgiveness, does not repent and plans to keep right on sinning as long as he can get away with it. At this point, Father Greg should pick up the phone and call the cops.

The unexamined assumptions in the "Priest" screenplay are shallow and exploitative. The movie argues that the hidebound and outdated rules of the church are responsible for some people (priests) not having sex although they should, while others (incestuous parents) can keep on having it although they shouldn't.

For this movie to be described as a moral statement about anything other than the filmmaker's prejudices is beyond belief.

Those bolded phrases above could just as easily be me or another disability activist on Baby saying:

"What I object to is the use of assisted suicide and the trope of 'better dead than disabled' to spice up just another boxing movie."

"Instead of taking the time to explore living with quadriplegia in a thoughtful way..."

"The unexamined assumptions about disability in Baby are shallow and exploitative."

"For this movie to be described as a moral statement about anything other than Eastwood's prejudices about disabled people is beyond belief."

In fact, disability activists staged protests of the film in 2005 and did say similar things. And Ebert's response then included citing how he has disabled friends, once dated a disabled woman, and has enjoyed and featured a film or two about disability over the years. It's not that Ebert doesn't believe in protesting or objecting to political issues in films. Interestingly, he even objected to the "fascist" nature of Eastwood's Dirty Harry back in 1971. He just hasn't found disability issues compelling enough to support in the same way as Catholicism or the Bill of Rights.

Roger Ebert is a lot of fine things, especially in this latest report on his own physical health, and he may be or become a disability activist yet. But his simple statements outing himself do not themselves reveal him as a disability activist, especially given his public preference for not spoiling movie surprises over offering the facts about disability issues just two short years ago.


Visual description of the photo: Provided caption: "Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert shows his thumb and his spirits are both in fine shape Monday at his home. Photo by Dom Najolia of the Sun-Times." (I think it's worth noting that if Ebert does still have a trach to help him breathe, he's hiding it for the camera in this photo. And buttoning your airway behind a shirt isn't the best way to get air. One step at a time, I suppose.)

Kevorkian paroled

After serving eight years of a 10-to-20-year sentence for second-degree murder, Jack Kevorkian is expected to be free on June 1, 2007. Although he is requesting an expedited release because of allegedly poor health, it appears that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm will not grant that wish. A further reminder of his past:

Kevorkian was convicted in 1999 of second-degree murder in the Sept. 17, 1998, death of Thomas Youk, 52, of Waterford, a victim of the debilitating Lou Gehrig's disease.

The death was different from others in two ways. First, it was videotaped and aired on the CBS show "60 Minutes." Second, Youk was unable to press the button to deliver a fatal dose of drugs, and the tape showed Kevorkian doing it for him, which provided prosecutors with evidence that Kevorkian had stepped past the assisted-suicide line.

Youk was one of more than 130 people Kevorkian assisted in dying. A number of the people Kevorkian "helped" were determined to not be terminally ill even though that is the condition much of the public considers part of their moral reasoning for support of physician-assisted suicide.

The disability rights organization Not Dead Yet released the following statement on Thursday, December 14:

Disability activists were disappointed but not surprised by the announcement on December 13th 2006 that Jack Kevorkian will be paroled on June 1, 2007. Reflecting on years of experience with the euthanasia debate and with Kevorkian himself, the following predictions were made by members of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group that organizes opposition to legalized euthanasia, assisted suicide and other types of medical killings:

1. We expect that Kevorkian will show near-miraculous “recovery” from his alleged grave medical problems. He has announced that he plans to speak and write. We expect him to suddenly show enough health and energy to make numerous media appearances and speaking engagements. We could be wrong, but we were suspicious his health problems were greatly exaggerated when his lawyer filed appeals for four years in a row claiming Kevorkian was essentially on the brink of death.

2. Pro-euthanasia advocates will be scrambling to figure out how to maintain control of the debate over euthanasia and assisted suicide. Over the past few years, groups such as the Hemlock Society have reformed and sanitized their images – even changing their name. They’ve worked hard to maintain the fiction that the goals of the euthanasia movement in the U.S. are limited to legalization of assisted suicide for people who are close to death from a terminal illness, despite the fact that Hemlock provided $40,000 for Kevorkian’s legal defense. With Kevorkian once again gaining prominence in the debate, the public will be reminded of his role as a hero to the
pro-euthanasia movement, in spite of the well documented fact that the majority of his body count consisted of people with disabilities who were not terminally ill. It’s also doubtful that Kevorkian will cooperate with the sanitized euphemisms for assisted suicide being promoted by the pro-assisted suicide activists, which will help undermine some of the very expensive public relations work they’ve engaged in over the past few years.

3. Some things are harder to predict than others. Will Kevorkian preside over any more suicides or actively kill anyone? There’s no way to know, since the only rules Kevorkian cares about are his own. The fact that he’s made a promise doesn’t mean anything – he’s made promises to courts before and broken them.

4. Mike Wallace or Barbara Walters can be expected to do a very sympathetic and biased interview with Kevorkian. They’ll downplay his history of helping non-terminally ill disabled people commit suicide and portray him as some kind of martyr. They won’t mention his advocacy of lethal experimentation on death row prisoners or disabled infants at all.

Whatever happens, Not Dead Yet and the disability community will be paying attention and responding to developments. We witnessed the long awaited justice that put him in jail. We won’t forget the struggling disabled people he preyed upon. And we won’t be silent.

From the NDY archives, some information on the now-defunct pro-euthanasia group Hemlock Society.

Other links:

Why assisted suicide is a feminist issue by Barbara Waxman Fiduccia

A 2001 Ragged Edge article by NDY's Stephen Drake about Kervorkian

Recent Detroit Free Press article on the pro-euthanasia movement's response to Kevorkian's parole