Serial killer Jack Kevorkian shows off his suicide machine. Kevorkian claims to have helped more than 130 people, but a study of his victims found that not all of them were terminally ill or disabled.
The Detroit News and Washington Post compared him to civil rights heroes, fighting for what the News euphemistically referred to as “death rights.” Broadcaster Barbara Walters complained about the moniker Dr. Death, but as euthanasia expert Wesley Smith noted on his blog, Kevorkian earned the nickname long before he was associated with the euthanasia cause. In 1956, Kevorkian began showing a deep interest in death. He photographed the blood flow in patient’s eyes to determine the exact time of death and advocated for methods of prisoner executions that would allow transplants and experimentation. In the 1960s, he transfused cadaver blood into living patients at Pontiac General Hospital.
Beginning in 1970 he was a pathologist at Detroit’s Saratoga General Hospital for ten years before moving to California to dabble in artistic pursuits. But he continued to write in obscure medical journals about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In 1988, he published an article in Medicine and Law calling for suicide clinics that included experimentation on willing subjects. In 1987, he advertised in Detroit newspapers offering “death counselling” services.
In the decade beginning in 1990 Kevorkian helped more than 130 people commit suicide. The first, Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Alzheimer’s patient from Portland, Oregon, used a homemade contraption assembled from parts that cost Kevorkian $30 to make. He brought Adkins to his Volkswagon van in Oakland County, Michigan, where the patient pressed a button to release chemicals induced unconsciousness and within a minute, a timer on the machine sent a lethal dose of potassium chloride that would stop the heart. (He created another machine that used a face mask connected to a carbon dioxide canister.)
He was charged with first-degree murder but the charges were dropped in 1991 because Michigan did not have a law governing assisted suicide.
Kevorkian’s killing spree was not limited to those with Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis or malignant brain tumours. In 1997, the Detroit Free Press investigated his assisted suicides and found that 60 per cent of those he helped kill were not terminally ill. Several autopsies revealed “no anatomical evidence of disease.”
Kevorkian was careful not to administer the lethal chemicals himself and while charged several times, charges were dropped two more times because of confusion over Michigan’s assisted suicide law (1992) or juries acquitted him (1994).
Kevorkian thought he was legally untouchable, but in 1998 he video recorded himself turning on the machine that killing Thomas Youk, who had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and provided the tape to 60 Minutes. Kevorkian said Youk was too ill to flip the switch himself and claimed “Medical service is exempt from certain laws.” In 2000, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and during sentencing Oakland Circuit Judge Jessica Cooper said to Kevorkian “Consider yourself stopped,” and sentenced him to 10 to 25 years in prison. He was paroled in 2007 On condition that he not take part in any assisted suicides and not advocate for euthanasia.
In 2008, he ran for Congress and lost, but he continued to publicly urge lawmakers and the public to support legalizing euthanasia.
The Washington Post reported that Kevorkian’s crusade for physician-assisted suicide had the support of his colleagues in the medical profession, noting that in 1995 “a group of doctors in Michigan publicly voiced their support for Dr. Kevorkian’s” stand in favour of a “merciful, dignified, medically assisted termination of life.” The Post failed to mention that in 1991, the Michigan Board of Health voted to suspend Kevorkian’s license to practise medicine, saying he and his suicide machine “constitute(d) a threat to the public health.” In 1995, the American Medical Association urged Michigan’s attorney-general to stop Kevorkian’s killing spree, labelling him “a reckless instrument of death.”
The Detroit News reported that Derek Humphrey, founder of the pro-euthanasia Hemlock Society, credited Kevorkian with “getting the problem and possible solutions out to the general public,” although Humphreys was reticent about endorsing his methods.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, noted that euthanasia advocates typically want to distance themselves from Kevorkian while benefiting from his presence. By having Kevorkian challenge the law by breaking it, Schadenberg told The Interim, the larger movement was able to position itself as moderate in comparison.
Schadenberg said Kevorkian forced the issue of euthanasia and assisted-suicide into public consciousness by “making it a reality they had to think about.”
Since Kevorkian helped kill Adkins, Oregon and Washington state has legalized physican-assisted suicide in 1997 and 2008 respectively, while other states including California, Maine, Vermont, and Hawaii have debated the topic but rejected assisted suicide. The News captured the importance of Kevorkian as a leader within the movement when it reported, “the assisted suicide movement largely fell out of the national consciousness during Kevorkian’s prison years.” In 1997, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled there was no constitutional right to assisted suicide.
In recent years, the law-breaker was lionized. The Post quoted high profile lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who advised Kevorkian’s lawyers in several cases, calling the doctor “part of the civil rights movement.” In 2010, HBO aired a hagiographic biography entitled You Don’t Know Jack: The Life and Times of Jack Kevorkian starring Al Pacino, who won an Emmy for playing the title role.
In a press release, the American Life League said that through Kevorkian’s work, “the entire idea of assisted suicide came into vogue.” Judie Brown, ALL’s president, said Kevorkian’s “maverick image masked a serious threat to our culture in promoting euthanasia-on-demand as compassionate.”
