Word: kevorkianism
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...months since Kevorkian last detonated the euthanasia debate, the public's craving for information has grown. The strangest best seller in memory still hovers at the top of the charts: Final Exit, by Derek Humphry, founder of the Hemlock Society, instructs people on how to die, or to kill. Last summer, Wantz said, she tried to follow the directions in the book. When she failed, she turned to Kevorkian...
Humphry, like Kevorkian, has urged physicians to assist in patient suicides. But much of the medical community remains deeply divided over this issue. Doctors see firsthand the agony that confronts the terminally ill and the resources spent prolonging some lives that might be diverted to improving the lives of others. Many thus favor laws that make it easier for patients to reject aggressive medical care, and urge the stricken to make out living wills so that their wishes...
...wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about helping a patient with acute leukemia kill herself with barbiturates. A state panel of physicians found his actions medically and legally appropriate, and a local grand jury cleared him of any criminal charges. Yet Quill, like many doctors, rejects Kevorkian's macabre approach. "He certainly doesn't stand for the mainstream," Quill says. "This will again muddy the water...
Defenders of the right to die point to the need for careful safeguards around the process: Kevorkian ignored them all. There were no second opinions, no consent forms, no examinations to make sure that Kevorkian's "patients" were of sound mind as they made their decision. As a pathologist more accustomed to dealing with people after they have died, Kevorkian was in no position to confirm the diagnosis of any of the women he helped kill themselves. And his defiant pursuit of publicity suggests a man more obsessed with the justice of his cause than with the interests...
Death in a rusting van or a remote cabin is hardly a death with dignity. But, as the numbers of people who came to Kevorkian's defense yet again last week indicates, many among the general public have a profound fear that one day they too might lose control of their life and be left at technology's mercy. Until the medical profession and state legislatures address the issue systematically, a retired doctor with a bagful of poisons and an obsession will be viewed as a savior by frightened people in search of final peace...