Hero or goat as fits your perspective, Dr. Jack Kevorkian passed away last Friday. It brings to a close his battle to bring assisted suicide into the public consciousness.
Kevorkian, for those too young to remember, was a Michigan pathologist who advocated assisted suicide for people whose quality of life was such that they felt life was no longer worth living. In many instances his victims were in constant pain from disease or age. It brought to a head the medical ethics question about assisted suicide. He seemed to be answering the question, at what point in a human being’s life is death preferable to continuing to “hang on” in a state of abject misery.
To Kevorkian it was not a question for debate. It was a question for action. To him, it was in some sense an unjust law. And, philosophically speaking, unjust laws should be broken. And break it he did. The thing about civil disobedience, which is basically what Kevorkian was doing, is that the person doing so had to be willing to suffer the consequences of his actions. In other words, when what you are doing contrary to the law becomes enough of an annoyance to the state that it chooses to act, you must take your medicine, literally.
For Kevorkian, after beating several murder charges in the 1990s, taking his medicine happened in 1999, when he was convicted of second-degree murder for a patient suffering from Lou Gherig’s disease. He was released from prison in 2007, after which he did not help in any assisted suicide cases.
We can argue all day long about whether assisted suicide is right or wrong. Certainly there are many people who don’t seem to need help at all. But it does raise the right to die question. In some societies suicide is considered an honorable thing to do. In Japan’s Aokigahara Forest there is a constant battle to keep people from committing suicide. Japanese authorities have gone so far as to post signs outside the park, which in addition to a dense forest full of trees provides breathtaking views of Mount Fuji. The forest is called the Sea of Trees, but is also home to the highest number of suicides in a country that ranks among the world’s top for suicide per capita.
Japan's suicide rate has increased with the recent economic downturn. In January of 2009, Japan recorded 2,645 suicides, a 15 percent increase over January 2008, according to the Japanese government. Despite efforts by the government to cut the number of suicides by more than 20 percent by 2016, officials fear the toll will rise along with unemployment and bankruptcies, matching suicide spikes in earlier tough economic times.
But that’s different from what Kevorkian was concerned with. Kevorkian’s concern was for his patients, believe it or not. He reasoned that some diseases, some afflictions, create more pain and suffering than anyone should have to endure. The question then becomes one of who, exactly, determines whether a person’s quality of life is so bad that dying would be preferable. It seems, in Kevorkian’s case, that his “willingness” to provide such a service was in a way self-serving in trying to drive home his message about the right to die.
Despite his tenure in prison, Kevorkian stood by his decisions. In a recent interview, he was asked if he regretted his decision to help those people.
"No, no. It's your purpose (as a) physician. How can you regret helping a suffering patient?" he said.
It’s ironic to me that we put down animals who are in dire straits. A horse with a broken leg, a dog who has outlived his years but is still breathing, and we don’t think twice about it. We call it being humane. But when we press the same value on human beings, then the populace is up in arms, as if just by knowing such things exist it would make them a candidate. Instead, those people wish to impose a law making it illegal to perform assisted suicide.
In the end, if the people really want to do themselves in, they can and will do it. The courts are rife with such cases and there are far too many to enumerate.
For me personally, I witnessed a family member with advanced emphysema who was kept alive by machines for years. He eventually passed away, but had dwindled to less than 100 pounds and had spent the last several years of his life in a hospital bed. All of that because one person would not agree to “pulling the plug” on the machines that kept him living. Now, you tell me what’s humane? We all have our own opinions.
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