Word: kevorkian
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Wilfrid Sheed does a disservice to objectivity in discussing the celebrity of Dr. Jack Kevorkian [ESSAY, June 3]. The right-to-die movement in America today aims to end suffering at the request of the sufferer, and to compare it with Hitler's euthanasia ignores the obvious difference: "at the request of the sufferer." If the person suffering is able to think and communicate his or her wishes, that is a different scenario from the issue relating to Hitler in war. DAN CARLSON Pennsville, New Jersey Via E-mail...
...only recognize laws passed by a legislature, not made up by courts," Kevorkian said in Michigan, thus pushing button No. 1, distrust of the legal system. Since a large body of common law evolved in court, this is tantamount to throwing out half the book before the show even begins. Button No. 2 and the clincher at the Michigan trial was a simple video of Kevorkian's latest subjects begging to be allowed to die. Just reading their words into the record might not have done the trick, and screams of pain could have been counterproductive. But the sight...
...indeed. But should anyone have this awesome right? And if so, who? Dr. Kevorkian seems surprisingly vague on this point. The people who decide to end pain and life with one stroke should "be specified," he told Rooney, "I don't care by who." He finally plumps for the medical profession itself to choose future "Dr. Deaths," but his relations with organized medicine have always been as mutually contemptuous as his relations with courts, churches and anything else that's organized. Each generation chooses its celebrities, as one casts a play, to act out the stories that particularly interest...
Anyhow, as a doctor Kevorkian can only repeat himself now; but a celebrity has to keep moving. So--should he become a nice guy, or concentrate on staying out front? Maybe Don Rickles can advise him on this. But whatever he decides, Dr. Kevorkian won't really be out front anymore. That place was taken for 15 minutes just last week by a gang of anonymous nurses, one of five of whom confessed in a poll published by the New England Journal of Medicine to "hastening death" in intensive-care cases...
...this is so far from being news that Rooney talked in the interview of an age-old understanding, "a tacit agreement among doctors" to do just that. And he asked Dr. Kevorkian, "Have you ruined that for them?" To which the doctor answered with stunning and quite startling humility: "I don't think so, but I might have...