Dr. Kevorkian... where do you stand?

In Oregon we have Physician assisted suicide. It works like this. If three doctors find that you have less than three months to live you can get a bottle of pills that you can take when you want. Seems like a good compromise.

Pretty interesting graphs here. http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ph/pas/docs/year12.pdf (warning PDF)

I wonder the same, @poofandmook . When a beloved pet is near death and in pain with no chance of recovery, we see it as humane to end their suffering painlessly. Of course, there is the issue of the miracle cure invented the day after someone decides the fight, the pain, the cost to their family just isn’t worth it any more. It’s a tough ethical question.

I agree with his philosophy.

I think if you want to jump off a building and kill yourself when you are abled – you should be allowed to do so when dis-abled.

I believe in the option of assisted suicide (it’s a complicated issue but not always wrong), but I don’t think a man that paints shit like this should be the one doing it.

I think his heart was in the right place when he was helping others to be rid of their pain and suffering. Maybe society should seriously consider making assisted suicide a legal act more thoroughly throughout the country. Euthanasia has its merits in certain cases in my humble opinion.

I’m all for it. I want quality out of my life not quantity and I want the right to say when.

I think that assisted suicide should be legalized.

The reality is that is it happening every day in hospitals all over the world. A simple upping of the morphine and a lowering of the oxygen and presto…assisted death.

May as well bring it out of the shadows.

Assisted suicide should be legal. I feel that people who are suffering should be allowed to end that suffering. As @ETpro pointed out if an animal is suffering people take them to be put to sleep. Why shouldn’t a human be allowed the same option?

@trumi

That’s totally disgusting. I always felt that Kevorkian was a grand-stander, and now I think he’s psycho.

I wish that there was a person advocating for this who was more admirable and who could be more effective in making this important point.

@trumi- @eden2eve

Actually I think some of his works are very interesting. If you follow the link below you will see some of his artwork and his own descriptions of what they depict and I think they are fairly profound in some cases.

And the artwork trumi chose to post is actually his indictment of war.

“What is war? Is it a soldier dying, or guns, or bombs, or crosses, or weeping mothers, or sport, or patriotism, or valor, or high paying jobs? What is war? Not hell. For that is merely evil. War is worse than evil. It is mind-boggling suicide mass suicide with humankind devouring or trying to devour itself. In vain attemps to assuage some sort of weird, innate (and apparently insatiable) appetite nurtured by our true and beloved God, Mars, we will not settle for less than the “flower of evolution” as the main course, embellished by bountiful side dishes and fanciful shakers filled with the “fruits” of our marvelous hands and big starving brains. How long will we persist in this lethal nonsense? How long before we really believe that salvation lies not in an insane paradox fostered by brute and selfish gluttony, but in the far more “nutritious” and healthful viand in the sadly neglected garden of human compassion and understanding? Considering the status of brotherhood today, possibly too long.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/

This is one of my favorites
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/god.html

By his own assessment he is no “artist”. His works were done as part of an Adult Art study class and some were sold to finance his work in the assisted suicide realm.

If you find that picture “obscene” then perhaps he is a better artist than he gives himself credit for.

The same argument goes on in Australia, here the Kevorkian equivalent is called Dr. Death as well. He tells you how to get nembutal which is often used to euthanize animals and brings about a painless death. The government is always trying to put him in jail. It gives me a pain, aged care is pretty pathetic in the USA and Australia but you are not allowed to do away with yourself, you are to sit in a crappy old folks home and die slowly and painfully so no one’s morality is put at risk. I reckon if I get advance notice, I will sit in my happy little car in my nice airtight garage with my old dogs and listen to my ipod while I inhale the fumes. And it is also why when my dad was dying of cancer he did not spend a day in the hospital, he died at home when he was ready to.

My great-grandmother went into the hospital for pneumonia, and they ended up finding a large tumor in her lung. Rather than suffer cancer, she opted to stop treating the pneumonia, go home with hospice care, and die from that instead of cancer later on down the road.

If that’s not some form of assisted suicide, I don’t know what is. But I’m glad she went the way she wanted to. She always said that she walked into her house, and the only way she was leaving it was feet first, and that’s exactly how she left her house for the last time. She passed on her terms, even though she would’ve recovered from the pneumonia just fine in a few weeks.

@poofandmook My Father In Law did something similar. His doctor told him he had a whole in his heart, and an operation would extend his life for a few years, at most. He wasn’t in very good health as it was, and decided to skip the operation. He passed on a few weeks later.

I am staunchly opposed to people offing themselves.

@Nullo That seems to me a decision best left to each person. How would you punish offenders?

@ETpro I approach this not as a legal issue, but as an ethical one. I’m also staunchly opposed to perfectly legal vices.

@Nullo That’s certainly your prerogative when defining ethics for yourself. My issue is when people try to extend their own ethical beliefs to others who don’t share them. And that is law, not ethics.

@ETpro Wouldn’t you say that laws are codified ethics? Not all laws, of course; traffic laws come to mind. People propose what they think is right and what they think should apply to other people.

@Nullo Yes. And I would favor allowing some form of assisted suicide for those who are terminally ill and in great pain. I would prefer it not be the job of doctors, though. I would rather keep their single focus on preserving life.

Some people kill themselves slowly by drinking, smoking, eating the wrong foods, sedentary lifestyle, etc.. Others do it all at once.

I think Dr. Kevorkian is a hero. That’s not so much a matter of virtue or admirability as of action. He has acted on behalf of the right of individuals to exit with dignity from a terminal illness. If I ever need that kind of help, I hope there will be someone to give it.

I liked The Far Side cartoon showing the Grim Reaper glancing out at the audience in a movie theater, where we can see a woman sitting next to a caricatured Kevorkian, with the caption: “As His Eyes Grew Accustomed to the Dark, Death Suddenly Noticed His Girlfriend Sitting with Dr. Jack Kevorkian.” (The Far Side, May 28, 1993, by Gary Larson.)

There is a difference between omission (DNR) and commission (assisted suicide). Now that that is out of the way, certainly nobody should be required to live to keep the state or Jesus happy. But there is a problem when you ask for an accomplice for your suicide. The State might just object to you being an accessory. Kevorkian was on the moral right side of the issue, but legally he found himself on the wrong side.

@josie: He didn’t exactly find himself on the wrong side… he wasn’t an accomplice in any of the suicides because he purposely recorded every consultation and made sure the patient and nobody else “pulled the plug” so to speak.

He specifically PUT himself on the wrong side when he administered the lethal injection himself on a patient, specifically so he would get arrested, get charged and convicted, and locked up. He reasoned that this would get the case to the supreme court. It didn’t, of course, and he was paroled.

I’m all for it. Ever been to the memory care unit of a nursing home? That sways me enough in itself. It’s such a touchy subject and I have always felt that suicide was such a selfish thing to do especially if you’re young and healthy and you have people that love you. You put them through so much pain, but at the same time, it’s your life! If you can’t decide when you want to end it, why should someone else be able to decide for you? So, I just think that especially in the case of people who are sick and dying or just old and ready to pass, if they feel like it’s the time, we should not be able to stop them. It seems ludacris, like I said, to make that decision for them. “No! You are going to sit in that bed and be a vegetable until you wither away and die on your own!”

I’m with you @deni!