Image via WikipediaWell I have a lot of comments on issues since I have been gone but the death of Dr. Jack Kevorkian last night jumps to the top of the list.
I never knew Dr. Kevorkian but I do know his partner and side-kick, NEAL NICHOL who has been featured repeatedly as part of the Kevorkian story.
I am in the LAB business and clinical labs have, in the past, been run by PATHOLOGISTS. These are doctors who perform autopsies and know a lot about histology and clinical laboratory tests and procedures; something like CSI and what they do after the person has died to determine what killed him.
Neal Nichol was a distributor of ours who sold our products as well as many other manufacturers’ products to clinical labs which include the pathology department.
I did not know that Neal has a very long history with Dr. Kevorkian and supplied the good doctor with all the equipment needed to perform his assisted suicide procedures.
I also just learned that Neal and Kevorkian experimented on themselves trying to see if cadaver blood could be used for living people. The story 2 days ago showed how both contracted hepatitis C from the experiments and how Neal was cured by an experimental drug (just released for general use) but Kevorkian was too old to participate in the study and was left with the disease…Kevorkian died of a pulmonary embolism (according to the first reports).
I have always admired Dr. Kevorkian for what he was trying to do; he wanted our society to address the need for “assisted suicide” because there was/ is a strong need for the procedure and yes, he assisted patients to commit suicide.
He was tried and imprisoned when a patient could not press the button to start the fatal chemicals flowing because he was a paraplegic and Kevorkian had to do it for him which means that HE actually did the deed and not the patient; he was convicted of second degree murder.
I have always believed strongly that NO ONE has the right to tell you what to do with your body and this applies to abortion and assisted suicide. I don’t care what you think your god’s opinion on issues is because your god does not exist so you have no idea what your god thinks so you make it all up and apply that bullshit to perfect strangers that just want to do with their bodies what they want.
Kevorkian wanted to bring “regulation” to assisted suicide and that has happened in Oregon with great results and no problems; the Netherlands
Assisted suicide is needed because many suffering patients cannot do it themselves or do not know how to do it in a quiet “medical” manner; not everyone can just shoot themselves or hand themselves…they want it done by a doctor that will do it correctly and without pain…is that too much to ask for?
I know I will hear all that “pro-life” shit and that is only god that can take a life…well fuck that…we will all die but some of us will not have a nice, quiet, painless death after many years of good living…some of us will contract a debilitating disease that will not only take our normal existence away from us but will subject us to excruciating pain.
Not only that, but while taking this hard road to death, we watch our family suffer also so to any reasonable person, prolonging a hopeless situation is absurd and if the person wants to leave this earth in a dignified manner, when they are pre-vegetable, what the hell is wrong with that.
I remembered when my father-in-law looked at me and said I need to go; I do not want to live this miserable life not being able to take care of myself. I am a man and I want to leave like a man.
I said, Dad, I cannot do anything because it is against the law but I will not do anything to prolong your suffering.
Death with dignity is a worthy cause and Doctor Kevorkian will go down in history as someone that cared about humanity enough to try to get our religiously anal society to think about the needs of the dying human instead of our society’s bullshit sense of what is right and what is wrong.
I salute Dr. Jack Kevorkian as a great humanist and medical ethics pioneer.
Who knows how many Kevorkian killed? We only know about the one because he released the videotape showing it. Four of the "suicides" had no underlying terminal conditions. They were probably depressed. So do you think we should help kill every depressed person who wants to die? I have several happy family members who would be dead now in that scenario.
ReplyDeleteDr. Kevorkian had very strict rules about who he can help through assisted suicide and these same rules have been used in the Oregon law for assisted suicide which addresses factors such as depression and other conditions that would eliminate a candidate from applying for assisted suicide help. Assisted suicide conditions have been studied extensively and as in Oregon, prove that it can work as it was intended and that there would be NO unintended cases. Here lies the problem with assisted suicide: lack of knowledge about the plan and how it has safety features to guard against granting assisted suicide help to the wrong candidates; Dr. Kevorkian was a true humanitarian and knew what he was doing.
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