HCR -- Assisted Suicide & the Death of Kevorkian

By John Ballard

Jack Kevorkian died of cancer last week at the age of 83.His name will forever be connected with assisted suicide.

In the interest of completeness, no narrative about health care reform can ignore suicide, the most extreme of end-of-life options. Suicide like abortion, is a radioactive topic, but cannot be ignored.
This brief article by William Saletan is the only reference I aim to post about assisted suicide.
Suicide, like abortion, is an intensely private matter. The less attention it receives the better.

I always thought Kevorkian was basically right about assisted suicide. I figured that if my parents ever wanted to end their lives, I'd find the pills and help them. But reality turned out to be more complicated. I heard my father on the phone telling friends he was ready to go. "If I had a euthanasia option, I would take it," he told one well-wisher, "because there are very few interesting things left for me to do." His words chilled me. This was not a man tortured by pain. His breathing was fine that morning. His mind was intact. His body seemed to be rallying. But he was stuck in a wheelchair, too winded to talk much, and too often alone. He was bored. The thought of him taking suicide pills, when a game of cards might do, shook me up.

Kevorkian, cut off from mainstream medicine, was lax about investigating palliative options and verifying that his patients were terminally ill. And he didn't know where to stop. For years, he provided lethal drugs but left the suicidal act to his clients. Then, faced with a patient too physically impaired to do the job, Kevorkian injected the drugs himself. For that, he went to jail.

But he brought assisted suicide out of the shadows, and behind him came a wave of reformers more careful about drawing lines. Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, for example, requires the attending physician to

1. inform the patient of "feasible alternatives, including � comfort care, hospice care and pain control,"


2. "inform the patient that he or she has an opportunity to rescind the request at any time and in any manner, and offer the patient an opportunity to rescind at the end of the 15-day waiting period,"


3. "refer the patient to a consulting physician � for a determination that the patient is capable and acting voluntarily," and


4. "verify, immediately prior to writing the prescription for medication � that the patient is making an informed decision."

[...]   Kevorkian didn't have the answers. But he raised the right questions. We can't criticize his flaws, temper his ideas, and praise the hospice movement without acknowledging what he did. He forced an open conversation about the right to take your own life. Under what conditions, and within what limits, should that right be exercised? Even if it's legal, is it moral? What do you do when a loved one wants to die? Kevorkian didn't take those questions with him. He has left them to us.