Word: kevorkian
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Faced with such prospects, is it any wonder Kevorkian has hundreds of letters from people who want him to help them...
When people are asked how they wish to die, most respond something like this: quickly, painlessly, at home, surrounded by family and friends. Ask them how they expect to die, and the fear emerges: in the hospital, all alone, on a machine, in pain. What Kevorkian claims to offer patients is a chance to control the circumstances of their death -- something which, for all the new laws and heightened awareness of recent years, many hospitals and doctors still may fail...
...Kevorkian knows firsthand about loss of control. "Our mother suffered from cancer," says his sister Margo Janus. "I saw the ravages right up to the end. Her mind was sound, but her body was gone. My brother's option would have been more moral than all the Demerol that they poured into her, to the point that her body was all black and blue from the needle marks. She was in a coma, and she weighed only 70 lbs. Even then I said to the doctor, 'This isn't right, to keep her on IV,' but he shrugged his shoulder...
...even physicians who spend all their days with the terminally ill are divided over Kevorkian's answer to the problem of pain. Some may respect the patients' decision to kill themselves but draw the line doing it for them. To withdraw treatment merely allows the disease to do the killing. A lethal injection is altogether different. "Medicine is a profession dedicated to healing," the American Medical Association has declared. "Its tools should not be used to kill people...
...most prominent "obitiatrist," which is what he would like to call death specialists, Kevorkian has been outspoken about his safeguards. "You act only after it is absolutely justifiable," he insists. "The patient must be mentally competent, the disease incurable." The trouble is that he has trouble meeting his own standards. Over the years, when he has called the doctors and psychiatrists of the people he was working with, they have said they would have nothing to do with him. "Now that's ethical?" he asks. "If doctors won't cooperate, what do you expect me to do? You think...