Jack Kevorkian Dead at 83: Dr. Death, or Dr. Hope?

Jack Kevorkian has died at the age of 83

Jack Kevorkian or “Dr. Death” as he came to be known, has died at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan at the age of 83.

His cause of death is not immediately known, but he had been having numerous medical complications as of late.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a pathologist, was an extremely controversial character who strongly believed in a person’s right to commit suicide when facing terminal illness. Kevorkian invented the ‘suicide machine’,  a machine designed to assist a person in their suicide, using painless, but lethal, doses of drugs (the ‘Thanitron’)or with the subject inhaling carbon monoxide (the ‘Mercitron’).

In 1999, Jack Kevorkian was convicted in the assisted deaths of 130 terminally ill patients. He served five years of a 10-25 year sentence. He once said, “Dying is not a crime,” and until the day he died he was a part of the Right to Die movement.

Of course Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s way of doing things wasn’t perfect, but I do think the idea of being able to make a choice to ‘check out’ when suffering terribly or dying should be one’s option. Put it this way, if our dog gets cancer and can’t eat, is in extreme pain, and his quality of life is gone, what do we do? Force him to continue on, suffering until death overtakes him? Or do we put him out of his misery and let him go peacefully? The latter, of course. So why can we not make this choice for our own lives? Probably because the rules and regulations that would need to be put in place would be a whole other ball game…

The subject of assisted suicide is a touchy one. Not many people are willing to discuss it, unless:

A. They have experienced a situation where a loved one suffered terribly from a terminal illness who had wanted to die before the suffering became to bad;

B. They haven’t experienced  losing a loved one but feel it’s a moral issue.

Now, I am not saying all people who are vocal about assisted suicide and Jack Kevorkian, but generally it’s these two groups who are the most vocal about it.

I personally had a life changing experience five years ago when I helped care for my step dad who was dying of an extremely aggressive brain tumor. To have someone literally beg you for a gun to kill themselves with, or to put the bottle of morphine in their reach so they can end their suffering, is very traumatic.

This is just my opinion, and I understand that others may strongly disagree with me. Believe it or not, I understand why as well.

Tell me your thoughts! Do you agree with Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the Right to Die movement? Take the poll: