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Doctor Jack’s Back
His profession was to study the nature of diseases. However, somewhere down life’s road, Dr Jack Kevorkian, retired pathologist, started studying death. He advanced the compassionate philosophy of Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa to a new and controversial plateau, offering to alleviate people’s suffering by putting them to death, of course with their implicit consent. He claims to have assisted in at least 130 deaths in the 1990s. He called it Mercy Killing. The U.S. government was monitoring him the way they monitor a potential terrorist, just waiting for an opening. The game of death was going to lead Dr Jack Kevorkian to incarceration eventually.
When Dr. Kevorkian met Thomas Youk in 1998. Youk informed Dr. Kevorkian that he wanted to die. Stricken with Lou Gehrig’s disease, Youk was sick and tired of choking on his own saliva. So, Kevorkian administered the shots that would send Youk into eternity. However, the good doctor by now had grown arrogant. He taped the entire proceedings and gave the film to CBS, 60 Minutes. He also began sending out fatal sound bites through the media, daring the authorities to prosecute him. They did. He was convicted and jailed with a sentence of 10 to 25 years for second-degree murder of Thomas Youk.
Now Dr Death as, he is commonly known, has been paroled. He is out of jail after having spent about 3,000 days in prison. He was sentenced in April 1999.
Dr. Death has promised that he will not assist in any more suicides but he says that he is going to be a strong advocate to make Mercy Killing legal in the U.S. Kevorkian’s face looks gaunt; his 78-year-old body is plagued by hepatitis C and diabetes but he vows to fight until the end.
The question here is simple: Is he right or wrong? Again, this all comes down to religion and morality. Does a human being who is a virtual vegetable have the moral authority to end his or her life? Assuming there exists no scientific hope, of bringing them back from the living dead. What then….? What do you say to a person, who, of his or her own free will wants to die? Never mind the law with its complications, rebuttals, appendixes, loopholes and closing arguments Never mind religion and philosophy, the Supreme Court and public morality.
What would you say to someone like this?
“It is my life and if I want to die, it is my choice. I would have committed suicide, if I could, but I am a vegetable, so I need someone like Dr. Jack Kevorkian to help me die. I have lived for years and years, like this, suffering in ways that are both terrifying degrading and painful. I do not feel human anymore. I truly would be better off dead. I have thought about this extensively. I believe in God. I believe in prayer. Why this happened to me, I do not know. Right now, I do not care. Even God would not want a human being living the way I exist. A rodent can breathe and feel, move and eat, defecate and urinate without help. I cannot. You will never know how I feel. Try; put yourself in my body, agony and torment for one day. You tell me to pray, I do. You tell me while there is life there is hope. Well, modern science does not think so. I do not want to wait for a miracle cure from God or man anymore. I just want peace for my body, for my mind. For what I have gone through in the last fifteen years, I believe that I have earned the right to make this one final choice. I choose to die with whatever little dignity I have left. My choice does not threaten your way of life, or your morality, or the future of your children. Look at me; picture yourself like me for the next fifteen years.”
What would you say to someone like this?
Comment by Devon White
Posted on June 11, 2007 at 1:39 pm
The way the blog is slanted, it is all for mercy killing. And that is not exactly right. What happens if mercy killing were to become legal. As everything legal, it will be abused. It is not for human beings to decide who’s to live and who’s to die. There is a God, you know. There is a reason for life there are reasons for death. There are reasons for joy and reasons for suffering. We do not always understand it all, but because we don’t understand it that does not mean that we take matters into our hands. Sure, life is terrible for those who are incapacitated, those in a coma… there are millions of people like this all over the world. I think that it is wrong, this whole mercy killing business. Dr Jack Kevorkian cannot be permitted to go around the country killing people who want to die. There would be chaos. Thank God he was stopped by the government. I understand where Doctor Death is coming from. He feels that he is the moral compass of man and god. The Doctor feels that the work that he has been doing is justified in the eyes of God. Sure, but then so do those suicide bombers. It is a matter of belief. I think that the Doctor is wrong, so are the suicide bombers. Mercy killing is wrong. That is all I have to say.
Comment by Jennifer Sanchez
Posted on June 11, 2007 at 1:54 pm
What I would say to someone who wants to die is, you don’t understand the power and the ways of God. I do not pretend to understand it either. I would not be able to endure your suffering. I wish it had not happened to you, I do not understand why it happened to you, but there is a reason, I do not know what it is. God has his plans. There are rewards for you, waiting for all that you are going through. All this suffering will not be in vain. What would I do if I had to suffer like you for the next fifteen or twenty years? Yes, I would pray to God to take me. I am not denying this. I would not want to live, but I would not want to take matters into my own hands and ask someone to kill me. I would not do that. That is morally wrong. That is what I believe in. I believe in God and I believe in an afterlife that is beautiful, pure and good. If there were no life after death, the blink of an eye existence, that we all have here on earth, would be meaningless. Suffering is part of life, so is death. Both life and death are decided by a higher power. To kill somebody is a sin, call it what you will, mercy killing or euthanasia, it makes not difference. It is murder most foul and a sin in the eyes of God. That is what I would say to someone suffering. Your time of death will come as ordained and the fruits of your suffering and sorrows, you will reap in an everlasting life. Then, and only then will you find the answers to your suffering, life and death.
Comment by Shane Seamus
Posted on June 12, 2007 at 11:00 am
Hogwash. That is what all this talk about god and philosophy is when you are talking about a human being who is a total vegetable. Even God would not want a human being living like that. What purpose does a totally incapacitated human being serve to God or man? What purpose? His mind is gone, his body is finished, his spirit is dead and his soul is wrapped in pain every moment of his existence. He dreads being alive, because the moment he wakes, he has to deal with the fact that he is alive, with tubes sustaining his wasted body. No human being should be forced to live like this.
To bring religion and God into this argument is pathetic. Look at things practically and you will chnage your tune. There is nothing wrong in wanting a release from torment that will never go away. Mercy Killing should be legalized. Every potential Mercy Killing case will have to go through a lawful process. This can be regulated, controlled and done well. It is easy to on the outside looking in on Mercy Killing. Spouting scripture and words of wisdom are all very well but take a look at the man who is pleading to die after living like a vegetable for twenty years. There is no point in his existence, he has lost all reason to live, death would be the civilized answer to all his problems. It is his choice and the choice of his family. This is not murder. This is not against the will of God. Opposition to Mercy Killing comes from morality police who have not read the book of life and death. It’s called being practicle when all else is lost. When modern science can do nothing and intense suffering is a part of everyday existence, tough choices have to be made. The man or woman making the choice to die, has to be respected. For you to tell him he does not have that right; now that is morally wrong.