Ding Dong, Kevorkian's Dead

Shame the damn topic of assisted suicide won't die with him... Of course, there's articles cluelessly praising him all over the place, and here's my response to one:

[Writer] & fellow readers, PLEASE do some research on this guy. I did, and have bookmarks here:
http://www.diigo.com/user/xyzzyx/euthanasia

To summarize:

Kevorkian made it very clear in his book "Prescription: Medicide" and in court that his real goal was "making possible the performance of invaluable experiments" he described as "creative" and "of any kind or complexity" on disabled people from infancy onwards, because "...self-elimination of individual and mortally diseased or crippled lives taken collectively can only enhance the preservation of public health and welfare."  If the person wasn't capable of consent, it'd be "suicide by proxy."

He stated: "Intense emotionalism engendered by the concentration camp atrocities of World War II has unfairly stigmatized [human experimentation] and cloaked it in silence...Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that a few of the medical criminals did the right thing..."

In his plans, if the experiment wasn't lethal, "death may be induced" by things like "removal of organs for transplantation" or "lethal dose of new or untested drug to be administered by an official executioner." He proposed the idea of auctioning off the organs of people that were "hopelessly crippled" and giving a portion of the resulting proceeds to relatives, "whose financial burdens would be eased."

His first idea was to make it legal to perform fatal experiments on prisoners; when that failed, he realized that he needed to get society used to the idea of deliberately killing humans first, and chose to promote assisted suicide as that path. He placed advertisements offering to help "cripples" commit suicide, then picked "subjects" for their publicity value.

Repeated investigations showed that only 25% of those killed were terminally ill, most were not in untreatable pain, and some had no diagnosable condition.  Many had untreated depression or anxiety, were grieving the loss of a loved one, were in serious debt, or feared being a burden -- all things that aren't best handled by death.

He had *no* credentials in any field working with patients, and only worked with them as required for his residency to become a pathologist.  He wanted to be around death whenever possible as a student, liked to take pictures of dying people's eyes, and cadaver blood in his paintings.  His death videos show a lack of any emotion, totally the opposite of videos made by any orgs worldwide that truly do care about the patient.

As far as assisted suicide is concerned, there are solid reasons that most disabled people & virtually all of our orgs are against it... Rather than restate them here (this is long enough) I'll link to it:
http://bit.ly/l16hS2

If the real reason people want to legalize euthanasia is to alleviate poor quality of life, then they would advocate measures that uphold quality of life for terminal & disabled people and for more research into ways to alleviate suffering while science hunts for cures. 

Right now, the advocates end up discovering at the end that they don't really want to die unless they're depressed, and the folks that do ask for it (or in some cases, didn't ask) do so from the same motives as Kevorkian's subjects, often after subtle or blatant hints from others around them...

Why call them service *animals* if they must be dogs?

I'm lucky that I live in my childhood home my family owns, and that I don't need to rely on my cats as service animals (I did have a pair that showed a strange ability to detect & mitigate/halt meltdowns before I did, though).  I just read and responded to a sentence in a blog post on a pet site hosted by our paper:

"In simpler language, dogs who provide emotional support are no longer considered service animals."

No, that isn't what it means... A lot of disabled people rely on trained miniature horses (for blind guides), cats (detect/warn for seizure, blood sugar, limited fetch/retrieval, etc.), and other animals for a variety of reasons.  Common reasons include dog allergies and a home/life that isn't good for dogs (tiny non-ground-floor apartment that the person rarely leaves), or phobias/aversions.

The change means that everyone that relies on those other species will either lose their service animal (even if they've worked together for years) or their home.  [Edit: miniature horses will be allowed in a few rare cases.]

There's little reason to restrict disabled people this way if another meeting the same standards is more appropriate; they aren't infringing on any other citizens' rights (at least not in any way that a service dog wouldn't).  From what I've read, it's a matter of our government being pressured by corporate interests to restrict American rights (as any of us could become disabled and need assistance) to make things run more smoothly for their businesses.

According to ABC7-KGO, California is considering adding protection for other service animals as they regard the federal law a "floor rather than a ceiling".  (On TV they also said that public comment will be taken, just didn't say where. I'm still trying to find it...)

The San Francisco Mayor's Office on Disability is having a meeting on the topic in May where they want to hear comments from disabled people with service animals, particularly emotional support animals. Anyone interested can contact the Mayor's Office on Disability at 415.554.6789 voice, 415.554.6799 TTY or via email at mod@sfgov.org

Response To Yet Another Kevorkian Fan

Yet another comment to share... I found the article You Definitely Don’t Know Jack while searching for material I could use in my Salon letter and liked it even though it wasn't quite meaty enough. However, I really didn't care much for one commenter's clueless parroting of Kevorkian's bullshit, so I responded in case someone else might be educated in the future. (I really need to add some kind of little horizontal rule or other mark to show where the beginning of my quoted comments are...hmm.)


Kevorkian only began commenting on terminal patients AFTER he realized that it was his most likely path to legalize live human experimentation, since he wasn't having luck pushing through experiments on prisoners. Tellingly, 75% of his "subjects" weren't terminal, and he picked his subjects for their publicity value rather than their circumstances.

It isn't advocating for a rational adult's freedom when a person talks about performing live experiments on infants with birth defects, people with treatable mental illnesses or cognitive disabilities, etc. If he truly was about mercy, then why has he openly stated that his hope is to experiment on & then kill them legally?

Also notable is that disabled (severe or non) people and those doing hospice care of the terminally ill -- the folks with the most firsthand experience -- are his biggest adversaries. We know better than anybody whether one can have a good life with various problems, what the real roadblocks to achieving one is, and when death actually makes sense (like when pain is beyond merely unbearable *and* there's absolutely no way to control it).

Instead, his supporters are non-disabled, non-terminal folk that assume that our lives are so bad that only rare "strong" types can "tolerate" it. Their reaction is more akin to a child terrified of the dark: rather than try to find out what's really there or listen when one of us tries to show them (then help us all fight to make sure it's not made artificially worse), they fight for the right to run away screaming.

We Do Know Jack, Unfortunately

As is becoming my latest habit, I've decided to share the rather upset comment I posted in response to Salon's usually-good movie critic's naive review of the new bullshit movie about Jack Kevorkian... Only change below is that I'm integrating the links, rather than having them sit out separately.

It's rare that an article makes me literally cry out in frustration, but I have to admit that this one did it... The author clearly shifted from buying into one inaccurate myth about Kevorkian directly to the opposite based purely on what the movie (or its website) has claimed.
Reality is, first, that 75% of Kevorkian's 'subjects' weren't terminal; autopsies showed some (one report is 5) had no serious physical problems at all. Kevorkian has openly regarded assisted suicide as a "distasteful" tactical step in getting society to accept live human experimentation and thus "make it possible to conduct daring and highly imaginative research". His targets in order: disabled babies/kids/adults, criminals, and ultimately healthy young adults who "just don't want to live any more".
Some theoretical cases he described (below details on one real-world man whose body he dissected):
Salon should report on why the overwhelming majority of his patients were female. The links I have below cover the topic with info on the individuals, but a targeted explanation is here.
Some good sites with factual, easy-to-read information on Kevorkian:
Not Dead Yet's articles on Kevorkian

International Task Force on Euthanasia's JK section
Ragged Edge Magazine: The All-Too-Familiar Story

Direct quotes from Kevorkian (from above sites, which have sources cited):
"[T]he voluntary self-elimination of individual and mortally diseased or crippled lives taken collectively can only enhance the preservation of public health and welfare."
"Intense emotionalism engendered by the concentration camp atrocities of World War II has unfairly stigmatized [human experimentation] and cloaked it in silence...Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that a few of the medical criminals did the right thing..."
From his book 'Prescription: Medicide':
"helping suffering or doomed persons to kill themselves . . . is merely . . . a distasteful professional obligation. . . . What I find most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial acts."
His Goal:
He has described a process by which "subjects," including infants, children, even the mentally incompetent, would be used for experiments " of any kind or complexity." (30) Then, if the subject's body is alive after experimentation, "death may be induced" by such means as "removal of organs for transplantation" or "a lethal dose of a new or untested drug to be administered by an official executioner."
(I've tried finding the original full form of his statement -- I believe it was made to the court -- but I'm not having much luck. It's out there, though.)

[Edited to update links.]