Medicine at Michigan Shamefully Honors Jack Kevorkian

This article was published by National Review online on December 5, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Medicine at Michigan is a medical news magazine that reports on activities of the University of Michigan Medical School. The magazine recently published a list of 175 “stories” of its “leaders and best” doctors that were affiliated with or graduated from the medical school.

The doctors so honored offered tremendous service to the profession, such as the great pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, and the developer of the first polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk. But one of the listees — the late Jack Kevorkian — was a true villain and has no place being honored in any regard.

Jack Kevorkian

Kevorkian is listed under the section labeled, “Making a difference internationally” and “helping to serve the world.” This is how it begins:

“Dear Dr. Kevorkian, HELP! I am a 41-year-old victim of MS. I can no longer take care of myself. Being of sound mind, I wish to end my life peacefully . . .”

This letter from 1990 is typical of the correspondence received by Jack Kevorkian, who was the best-known advocate for physician-assisted suicide in the United States.

Yes he was. But let’s get real. Kevorkian had an unremarkable medical career as a pathologist. He wouldn’t be remembered at all but for killing or assisting the suicides (mostly, with carbon monoxide) of some 130 people during the 1990s

Honoring Diane Coleman. Founder of Not Dead Yet.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Diane Coleman

I have written and published previous articles honoring Diane Coleman, the founder of Not Dead Yet. The most recent article was written by Clay Risen and published in the New York Times on November 20, 2024. 

Risen begins:

Diane Coleman, a fierce advocate for disability rights who took on Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the right-to-die movement and the U.S. health care system, which she charged was responsible for devaluing the lives of Americans like her with physical and mental impairments, died on Nov. 1 at her home in Rochester, N.Y. She was 71.

Her sister Catherine Morrison said the cause was sepsis.

Risen explains what Diane did before founding Not Dead Yet:

Ms. Coleman was born with muscular spinal atrophy, a disorder that affected her motor neurons. She was using a wheelchair by 11, and doctors expected her to die before adulthood.

Instead, she blossomed, graduating as valedictorian from her high school and receiving a joint J.D.-M.B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1981.

It was only after several years of working as a consumer protection lawyer that she shifted her energies to disability rights, joining a flourishing movement that was pushing for anti-discrimination laws at every level of government, including improvements on transit and in buildings.

Ms. Coleman was a member of Adapt, considered one of the most militant disability rights groups.  She participated in scores of protests, blocking the entrances to buildings where conferences were held or government offices were housed.  She was arrested more than 25 times.

Risen explains why Diane focused on preventing assisted suicide:

In the 1990s, she shifted her attention yet again, to assisted suicide and the right-to-die movement. Though the movement was aimed at people with terminal illnesses, legislation in many states expanded to include people with significant disabilities.

Gifted with a dark sense of humor, in 1996 she founded a group called Not Dead Yet, a reference to a memorable scene in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in which a man tries to pass off an infirm — but very much alive — relative to a man collecting dead bodies.

“To put it bluntly, she was blunt,” Jim Weisman, a disability rights lawyer, said in an interview.

Working on a shoestring budget, Ms. Coleman organized protests against right-to-die legislation, became a regular guest on television news programs and testified four times before Congress.

Diane explained why assisted suicide threatened people with disabilities:

At the core of her critique was the argument that the idea of a “right to die” was evidence of how little society valued people like her and a warning that the health care system was broken.

“It is already possible in some states for impoverished disabled, elderly and chronically ill people to get assistance to die,” she told the House Judiciary Committee in 1996, “but impossible for them to get shoes, eyeglasses and tooth repair.”

Diane challenged Peter Singer and Jack Kevorkian. Risen writes:

Not Dead Yet showed up at Princeton University in 1999 after the university announced the hiring of Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who had argued for voluntary euthanasia for people with disabilities.

Never shy with a quote, Ms. Coleman told the British newspaper The Independent that Mr. Singer was “a public advocate of genocide, and the most dangerous man on earth.”

Her biggest target was Dr. Kevorkian, who became a household name in the 1990s and early 2000s for assisting patients in ending their lives. She sent protesters to his house outside Detroit, and she reveled in his 1999 conviction for second-degree murder after he helped a man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis end his life.

“It’s the ultimate form of discrimination to offer people with disabilities help to die,” she told The New York Times in 2011, “without having offered real options to live.”

Risen finishes the article by recounting some of Diane's many accomplishments:

When she was 6, Diane was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, which doctors later said was actually muscular spinal atrophy and would require surgery. The adoption agency told the Colemans that they could send her back. They declined.

Instead, they encouraged her to work hard in school and to attend college, at a time when many people with disabilities did not. She graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Illinois in 1976, and she received law and business degrees from U.C.L.A. five years later.

She spent eight years working for the California Department of Corporations, where she focused on consumer fraud. She attended her first protest in 1985, against the lack of wheelchair lifts on Los Angeles buses, and she joined Adapt a year later.

In 1989, she moved to Nashville, where she developed plans for an independent living facility for people with disabilities. She continued that work after moving to Chicago in 1996, the same year she founded Not Dead Yet.

Ms. Coleman’s first marriage, to Michael Yester, ended in divorce. She later married Stephen Drake. Along with her sister Catherine, he survives her, as does another sister, Denise Coleman.

Ms. Coleman and Mr. Drake moved to Rochester in 2008, to be close to his family. By then the muscles controlling her breathing had begun to weaken, and she was using a ventilator. 

Still, she remained the chief executive of Not Dead Yet until her death, insisting that her fight was not just for people with disabilities but for everyone.

“The disability community is the canary in the coal mine,” she told The Village Voice in 1996. “This assisted suicide-euthanasia issue is a test for our nation. If we as disabled, chronically ill or terminally ill people are declared better off dead, who will be next?”

More articles honoring Diane Coleman:

• The Great Diane Coleman has died. She has left an amazing legacy (Link)
•  Not Dead Yet comments on the passing of Diane Coleman (Link)
  

Right-to-die legislation must consider concerns of African Americans

This article was published by Bridge Michigan on September 25, 2024.

Terri Laws

By Terri Laws, associate professor of African and African American studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

In the 1990s, Royal Oak’s Dr. Jack Kevorkian put a national spotlight on the debate over the right of terminally ill patients to die with the aid of a physician. As Democrats reclaim their majority in the state Legislature, Michigan may be at the epicenter of this conversation again.

Last fall, a group of Democrats introduced the Michigan Death With Dignity Act, which would legalize physician-assisted dying, also known as medical aid in dying. Patients with a terminal condition, expected to die within six months, would be able to request that a participating doctor write them a prescription for drugs that, when self-administered and ingested, would allow the patient to die on the date of their choosing.

Many Michiganders will see this legislation as reasonable and compassionate. To others, however, often people of color, this legislation is more complicated. Some fear doctors and insurance companies may deny them lifesaving treatments and steer them toward assisted suicide instead. Others are concerned that legalization will normalize this type of death as the “correct” way to approach the end of life, when their cultural beliefs and practices tell them otherwise. Central to these views are issues around equitable access to care — and of trust.

According to a 2022 Pew Research report, nearly a quarter of the US population say they have “not too much or no confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public.” For African Americans, this mistrust has deep origins in exploitative experimental medicine and undertreatment. The best-known example — of far too many — is the 40-year long Tuskegee Syphilis Study authorized and conducted by the United States Public Health Service. Black men in rural Alabama, diagnosed with syphilis, were recruited into the study and were left untreated so physicians could follow the progression of the disease and conduct an autopsy once they died. The “study” continued even after penicillin became standard treatment in the 1950s and through 15 articles published in medical journals. In light of these horrifying details, it should be easy to see how rational many African Americans’ distrust of the traditional health care system is.

The effort to pass MAiD in Michigan is part of a larger, well-organized right-to-die movement. Legalization advocates move from state to state lobbying elected officials with template bills, which include the promise of legislative safeguards. They also point to public polls that measure the popularity of attitudes that support the legislation. But attitudes are not practice. Safeguards only put people at ease when they trust the entity creating them and that the people within those entities will enforce them. Data from states that have adopted right-to-die legislation shows that people of color are largely steering clear of pursuing a deliberate death. For example, in racially and ethnically diverse California, the Bureau of the Census reports that 35% of persons in the state selected their racial identity as white alone, yet public health reporting shows 88% of MAiD requests come from whites. A similar pattern of use has emerged across the country where the practice is legal.

A lesser-known outcome of Tuskegee is that it ultimately became one of several research studies later recognized as so egregious that it contributed to Congressional hearings and legislation that, ultimately, led to the national commission that approved the research standards and ethical framework that the US, and much of the world, lives with today. Passage of the Medical Aid in Dying Act in Michigan must include trustworthy safeguards, including genuine opportunities for community conversations and input — both before and after enactment — and funding for public education.

It is worth noting that people of color are not the only ones with reservations about MAiD. Those with less education and the un- or under-insured, not to mention persons who have disabilities, have expressed concerns as well.

For advocates of MAiD, the right to ingest medication that may bring about a “good death” seems morally right, compassionate, just and a matter of autonomy. But if we are to legalize the right to die in Michigan in a way that does not exacerbate distrust and inequity, we need to acknowledge and address Michiganders’ differing historical attitudes, cultural perspectives and lived experiences around end of life care.

Suicide capsule claims its first victim.

This article was published by National Review online on September 24, 2024

By Wesley J Smith

The ghoulish Australian “doctor” Philip Nitschke has long been obsessed with making suicide readily available to anyone who wants to die. Indeed, years ago, he told NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez that he wanted what he called “peaceful” suicide pills sold in supermarkets, even to “troubled teens.”

Nitschke also sold plastic suicide bags in Australia (which I helped cause to be outlawed when I busted him for his ghoulishness in the national media there in 2001). Subsequently, he traveled the world teaching how-to-commit-suicide classes and starred at international death-movement conventions. Awful.

More recently, Nitschke made world headlines in the assisted-suicide-boosting media for inventing a “suicide capsule” that asphyxiates the suicidal person with nitrogen. At first, Swiss authorities said it would be legal, and then they backtracked.

Philip Nitschke with suicide pod.

Legal or not, it appears the capsule was used by an American woman to become dead in Switzerland. From the AP story:

Exit International, an assisted suicide group based in the Netherlands, has said it is behind the 3D-printed device that cost over $1 million to develop.

In a statement, the group said a 64-year-old woman from the U.S. Midwest — it did not specify further — who had suffered from “severe immune compromise” had died Monday afternoon near the German border using the Sarco device.

It said Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, a Swiss affiliate of Exit International, was the only person present and described her death as “peaceful, fast and dignified.”

Dr. Philip Nitschke, an Australian-born trained doctor behind Exit International, has previously told the AP that his organization received advice from lawyers in Switzerland that use of the Sarco would be legal in the country.

In the Exit International statement on Tuesday, Nitschke said he was “pleased that the Sarco had performed exactly as it had been designed … to provide an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.”

Can you imagine people spending $1 million to develop a suicide pod? Was the capsule tested? If so, how? On animals? Who knows? Somehow, these questions don’t get asked.

A photographer was present to record the death — meaning to create images for suicide proselytizing. The story says several people, including the photographer, have been detained, but I would be surprised if anything came of it. Authorities rarely have the gumption to seriously punish suicide assistance unless in involves a teenager.

Here are the lessons: Nitschke’s (and Jack Kevorkian‘s) nihilism is infectious. Assisted-suicide promotion leads to increased suicide rates generally and eventually, suicide on demand — already the law in Germany because of a court ruling.

Unless we change course and unequivocally stand for suicide prevention and reject facilitation, we will see more of these tragedies.

Canada teaches doctors to become killers

This article was published by National Review Online on September 14, 2023.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

The Hippocratic oath explicitly prohibits doctor participation in euthanasia/assisted suicide. But doctors don’t take the great oath anymore, precisely because (in part) it conflicts with modern sensibilities that doctors can be ethical takers of human life.

And this is the result. The Canadian government is teaching doctors to become euthanasia killing specialists. From the Canadian-government press release:

Today, the Honourable Mark Holland, Minister of Health, and the Honourable Ya’ara Saks, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health, welcomed the release of the Canadian MAiD Curriculum developed by the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP). This Curriculum is the first nationally accredited, bilingual MAiD education program available to licensed physicians and nurse practitioners across the country and will help achieve a safe and consistent approach to care.

Since being announced in July 2022, this multi-year project has developed a series of training modules to advise and support clinicians in assessing persons who request MAiD, including those with mental illness, complex chronic conditions, or who are impacted by structural vulnerability, as well as help with the practical application of the MAiD legislative framework. It will be delivered through a combination of online and in-person learning sessions for interested health practitioners, regardless of their level of experience.

And here’s a point to be emphasized — it’s also about killing physically healthy people with mental illnesses:

This is another step in the work by all levels of government to prepare Canada’s health care system for the expiry of the exclusion of MAiD eligibility for people suffering solely from a mental illness on March 17, 2024. The Government of Canada will continue working with provinces and territories (PTs), and health partners to support MAiD practice in Canada, including careful assessment of requests, so that it operates in a consistent and safe manner across the country, recognizing PT differences for health care delivery.

By definition, the concept of “safe” killing is oxymoronic. Euthanasia isn’t medical care. It is homicide.

Somewhere Hippocrates is weeping, but Jack Kevorkian can’t stop smiling. Shame on Canada.

Kevorkian's ghost

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Christopher Lyons

Christopher Lyons has written an excellent commentary on a recent article by two bioethicists who argue that poverty, homelessness and having problems receiving medical treatment, should not hinder decisions for euthanasia.

Wiebe and Mullin's argument for radical autonomy with respect to (MAiD) euthanasia are deeply troubling in their implications and flawed in their considerations. 

Lyon's summarizes the argument by Wiebe and Mullin in the following manner:

In a nutshell, Wiebe and Mullin argue that MAiD can be a ‘harm-reducing’ embrace of individual autonomy to avoid prolonging suffering in oppressed people who cannot access adequate socioeconomic resources... They argue that even though a person may be poor or have limited options, they can still hold and express autonomy to request and receive death. Death, in their formulation, is the least bad option for people suffering social inequality in an unjust world.

Wiebe and Mullin are not making a new argument. In fact Kevorkian used it, too.

Thirty years ago, the American murderer Dr MJ ‘Jack’ Kevorkian, a euthanasia and assisted suicide advocate and illicit provider, expressed cruder versions of the same positions, claiming that ‘autonomy always, always should be respected, even if it is absolutely contrary, the decision is contrary to best medical advice and what the physician wants…’ and that a mere request for death is justification alone for provision, regardless of circumstance.

Kevorkian death van

Lyons continues:

It is also worth noting that Kevorkian disproportionately killed or assisted death for women, many of whom may not have had any physical illness and claimed ‘that only medical men should decide’ on MAiD. Aside from his blatant and lethal misogyny, his statements highlight a central but unacknowledged problem in Wiebe and Mullin and similar individualistic formulations of MAiD: the tension between the patient's autonomy, the clinician's autonomy, and society.

Wiebe and Mullin consider it paternalism to prevent killing.

Wiebe and Mullin, however, call it ‘paternalistic’ to prevent people from accessing MAiD but make no comment on the brutal paternalism of a privileged and empowered actor representing the state who judges someone’s eligibility for death and then may kill them. Why is clinician autonomy discounted? The privilege and power of assessors and providers is a major persistently unaddressed flaw in the reasoning of these kinds of patient autonomy-based arguments.

Wiebe and Mullin are asserting a radical autonomy that is obsolete.

... their definition of autonomy appears to be a repackaging of the obsolete ‘homo economicus’ model human actor from neoclassical economic theory, where people are understood to be ‘unswervingly rational, completely selfish, and can effortlessly solve even the most difficult optimization problem’. Research in neuroscience, biology, psychology, public health, sociology, and other disciplines has long since established that our relative autonomy and agency are products of myriad internal and external biophysical and social experiences, relationships, circumstances, and systems. None of us exists in hermetic vacuums of rational reason.

Lyon challenges Wiebe and Mullin on their view of autonomy.

By voiding a person’s relational context, the impact of their death on others, and the autonomy of the people who must assess and approve death from consideration, Wiebe and Mullin and their ideological colleagues idealise patient autonomy. Like Kevorkian, they construct euthanasia or assisted suicide (non-culpable homicide and suicide assistance under Canadian MAiD law) as virtuous though ‘tragic’ expressions of self-determination and ‘harm reduction’. Do they consider the harm to others from MAiD deaths as illegitimate or irrelevant?

How euthanasia may lead to eliminating people with disabilities and those who are poor.

Societies that find intellectual reasons to euthanise or kill the poor, sick, disabled, or socially oppressed groups commit atrocities. A former MAiD provider has even sounded this alarm in the wake of eligibility expansions. Despite claims that a lack of support for people is a ‘deep injustice’, the vision of society painted by Wiebe and Mullin is dystopian, where injustice may be morally permitted to flourish so long as others with greater autonomy judge oppressed people to have enough autonomy and ‘engaged hope’ to kill themselves or have themselves killed. Indeed, they even argue that medically provided death-for-oppression is a suitable and just response ‘to a world that currently does not exist and is unlikely to emerge in the near future’. Thus, in addition to MAiD for both chronic and terminal physical illness and disability, and official consideration or arguments for mental illness, children (‘mature minors’) and infants, we now see Kevorkian’s liberty-or-death mantra re-emerge as a new slip on the expansionist slope as an argument for MAiD for people whose sole condition is the experience of forms of deprived liberty. Wiebe and Mullin’s and allied proposals, hopefully unwittingly, thus serve the construction of an intellectual foundation for eliminating rather than emancipating the poor and oppressed by an empowered (medical) elite. MAiD, in this way, is ultimately a political, not a medical, project. We have seen versions of this before and we know how it ends.

Christopher Lyons, a Canadian academic in York, UK who writes about euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Euthanasia: Wrong is wrong, even if people are doing it.

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan Schrader

Meghan is an autistic person who is an instructor at E4 Texas at the University of Texas (Austin) and a EPC-USA board member.

I was reflecting the other day on how I first became aware of the issues of euthanasia  and assisted suicide, and what my experience indicates about a "majority" support for euthanizing people with disabilities. 

Back in 1998, during my last year of middle school, I had to take a class called Creative Problem Solving. It was basically an ethics class where people had to think through our opinions about controversial social issues. Our class studied the death penalty in-depth, but we talked about other issues too, and one of the issues we talked about was whether it was ok to help people with disabilities die by suicide.

John Kelly’s 1998 editorial about the death of 21-year-old, newly quadriplegic African American man Roosevelt Dawson at the hands of doctor Kevorkian was in the Boston Globe at that time; I think that’s what inspired my Massachusetts teacher to lead the discussion. He described the case; telling us that Dawson had been released from the hospital following a paralyzing infection, despite the hospital knowing that he intended to go to Dr. Kevorkian. “Wait, you mean they let him out of the hospital even though they knew that he was planning to die by suicide?” I asked. “That’s a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.” One other person agreed. “It’s wrong to kill people,” he said. However, almost everyone else in the class said nothing. I think that one other person said, “Well, I wouldn’t want to live like that either.” As a Special Education student, the connection between what we were discussing and the oppression of disabled people generally was blatantly obvious to me. “But think about all the technology we have nowadays,” I objected. “There are plenty of ways to accommodate people who are quadriplegic to lead fulfilling lives.” At the time, the term “ableism” wasn’t really in the public lexicon, so I used the only words I could come up with: “that’s discrimination,” I said, “it’s wrong to help people kill themselves because they have disabilities.” The lone other objector in the class agreed.

Then the teacher read a poem by Canadian poet Earl Birney. In it, two mountain climbers, Bobbi and David, ascend a peak together. On the way up, David kills a wounded bird. Bobbi notes: “That day returning we found a robin gyrating In grass, wing-broken. I caught it to tame but David took and killed it, and said, ‘Could you teach it to fly?’” Hence, the character David basically has the perspective that utilitarians and often general society has toward disabled individuals: accommodating disability is a hassle and eliminating disabled people is the easiest thing to do.

Then, in an ironic twist, David falls fifty feet, leaving him severely injured. Since David can’t feel his legs, he assumes that he will be paralyzed for life, and will need a wheelchair. Bobbi offers to stay with him or go for help, but David wants her to push him off a nearby cliff.

The teacher stopped reading the poem at that point and posed this question to the class: Should Bobbi push David off the cliff?

Again, there was the same pattern, with me and this one other guy objecting. “Of course she should not push him off a cliff,” I said, “she hasn’t even called 911 yet. What if he’s not paralyzed? And even if he was, that doesn’t mean that his life is worthless and she should push him off a cliff.” “Yeah, everyone has the equal right to live,” the objecting young man said.

As with our earlier discussion about Roosevelt Dawon’s suicide, most of the people in the class simply sat silently, looking uncomfortable. But, one of the class’s consummate bullies was more vocal about his perspective: “Of course she should push him off the cliff,” he said. “He’s a useless lump of flesh and he’ll burden everyone around him. What use does he have to society?” (This same bully had contributed to our class discussions about the death penalty by proudly saying that he would be willing to kill his own mother in the electric chair; I hope that he grew out of that type of thinking.)

Unfortunately, the bully’s perspective was the one that prevailed: most of the people in the class who were finally willing to say something agreed that Bobbi should push David off the cliff. And, what do you know, when the teacher finished the poem, we learned that she did just that.

I think that this anecdote from my eighth-grade classroom illustrates that personal choice shouldn’t always be sacrosanct. The Davids of the world aren’t entitled to conscript society into the rule of Bobbi so that the medical system can help them apply their nihilistic views about disability to themselves. Preventing violence and hate means that in equitable societies, majorities are obliged to cede some of their power to protect the rights of minorities.

From what I can tell, that middle school discussion was basically a microcosm of what most of contemporary human society has done in regard to euthanasia and its impact on the lives of disabled people. Most people either ignore it, or they are ok with it. However, this is a clear example of a time when communal support for an evil idea has been wrought from social conditioning and bigotry. Majority support doesn’t make something right, and the majority should not always get what it wants.

Choice? Canada's the "most permissive euthanasia law in the world"

This article was published by Nancy Valko on her blog today.

Nancy Valko

In his excellent July 10, 2022 blog, Alex Schadenberg, chair of the International Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, republished an article by Dr Ramona Coelho that now “Canada’s medical assistance in dying (Maid) law is the most permissive euthanasia legislation in the world”.

Coehlo says “Canada’s MAiD law currently allows suicide facilitation for persons with disabilities and is on track to expand in March 2023 to those living with mental illness. “ (Emphasis added)

How did assisted suicide/euthanasia laws get so far and so fast down the proverbial “slippery slope”?

In my December, 2016 blog “Pain and ‘Choice’”,  I wrote about how I saw the warning signs when I was a new nurse in 1969.

Here is my blog:

PAIN AND “CHOICE”

December 15, 2016 nancyvalko 

It was 1969 and I was fresh out of nursing school when I was assigned to a patient I will call “Jenny” who was thirty-two years old and imminently dying of cancer. She was curled up in her bed, sobbing in pain and even moaned “just kill me.” The small dose of Demerol I injected into her almost non-existent buttocks every four hours “as needed” was not helping. I reassured Jenny that I was immediately calling the doctor and we would get her more comfortable.

However, I was shocked when the doctor said no to increasing or changing her medication. He said that he didn’t want her to get addicted! I told him exactly what Jenny said and also that she was obviously very close to death so addiction would not be a problem. The doctor repeated his no and hung up on me.

I went to my head nurse and told her what happened, but she told me I had to follow the doctor’s order. Eventually, I went up the chain of command to the assistant director of nursing and finally the Chief of the Medical Staff. The verdict came down and I was threatened with immediate termination if I gave the next dose of Demerol even a few minutes early.

I refused to abandon Jenny so for the next two days before she died, I spent my time after my shift sitting with her for hours until she fell asleep. I gave her whatever food or drink she wanted. I stroked her back, held her hand and told stories and jokes. I asked her about her life. I did everything I could think of to distract her from her pain and make her feel better. It seemed to help, although not enough for me. I cried for Jenny all the way home.

And I was angry. I resolved that I would never watch a patient needlessly suffer like that again.

So, I educated myself by reading everything I could about pain medicine and side effects. I also pestered doctors who were great at pain control to teach me about the management, precautions, and rationale of effective pain management. I used that knowledge to advocate and help manage my patients’ pain as well as educating others.

I was delighted to see pain management become a major priority in healthcare and even called “the fifth vital sign” to be evaluated on every patient. I saw new developments like nerve blocks, new drugs, and regimens to control pain and other techniques evolve as well as other measures to control symptoms like nausea, breathlessness, and anxiety. Now we also have nutritional, psychological, and other support for people with terminal illnesses and their families.

Best of all was that I never again saw another patient suffer like Jenny despite my working in areas such as ICU, oncology (cancer) and hospice.

Twenty-Four Years Later

When my oldest daughter was 14, she attended a public high school where the science teacher unexpectedly started praising the infamous Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his public campaign for legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia. Kevorkian’s first reported victim was Janet Adkins, a 54 year old woman with Alzheimer’s in no reported physical pain who was hooked up to a  “death machine” in the back of a rusty van. Mrs. Adkins was just the first of as many as 130 Kevorkian victims, many if not most of whom were later found to have no terminal illness. Kevorkian escaped prosecution--even after he harvested a victim’s organs and offered them for transplant--until the TV show 60 Minutes aired Kevorkian’s videotape showing him giving a lethal injection to a man with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Shockingly, Kevorkian served only 8 years in prison before he was paroled and eventually became a media celebrity peddling assisted suicide and euthanasia.

My daughter, who never before showed any interest in my speaking and writing on the topic of assisted suicide, now stood up and peppered her teacher with facts about Kevorkian. The teacher asked her where she learned her information and she answered, “From my mom who is a cancer nurse”.

Sarcastically, he responded “So your mother wants to watch people suffer?” My daughter responded “No, my mother just refuses to kill her patients!” End of discussion.

Conclusion

But not the end of the story. Tragically, we now have legalized assisted suicide in several states and serious efforts  to expand it to include people without physical pain but with conditions like Alzheimer’s, mental illness or other psychological distress as well as even children.

As Wesley Smith recently and astutely observed:

“Moreover, the statistics from Oregon and elsewhere show that very few people commit assisted suicide due to physical suffering. Rather, the issues are predominately existential, such as fears of being a burden or losing dignity

The public is being duped by groups like Compassion and Choices that campaign for legalized assisted suicide on the alleged basis of strict criteria for mentally competent, terminally ill adults in unbearable physical pain to freely choose physician-assisted suicide with (unenforceable) “safeguards”.

The emerging situation throughout the world is more like Kevorkian’s dream of unfettered and universal access to medical termination of the lives of “expendable” people. How much easier is that when people with expensive mental health problems, serious illnesses or disabilities can be encouraged to “choose” to be killed?