Prime time death

Dr. Jack Kevorkian says he had two goals when he went on TV to cross the line between aiding in a death and causing one: to get charged with murder and to force a debate on physician-assisted suicide.

In the first he succeeded, with additional felony counts for violating Michigan’s assisted-suicide ban and drug laws as a bonus. The second, the debate, now can never occur in a rational way as long as he is involved.

The “60 Minutes” audience that watched Kevorkian give Thomas Youk three injections saw more than a life come to an end. It saw the transformation from advocate to zealot completed. To Kevorkian, the issue is now his issue. No human considerations matter. No other point of view can be tolerated.

Youk’s death, recorded in September, was everything death with dignity is not. It was cold, sterile, devoid of compassion. Youk’s family was not present, lest they be charged as accomplices. No one was there to hold him close, to offer words of love and comfort. There was only Dr. Jack Kevorkian, making his point.

It had to be that way because to Kevorkian taping the event was more important than caring for Mr. Youk. After all, a law passed by the Michigan legislature banning assisted suicide had just taken effect and a popular referendum on the law was approaching. It must have galled Kevorkian considerably that CBS insisted on airing the tape during ratings sweeps week and not the Sunday before the election.

Kevorkian claims to have assisted in 200 deaths since 1994. There is an increasing coincidence between the timing of those deaths and dates of significance to Kevorkian — court appearances, legislative action, election days — as if the terminally ill step forward to help his cause. Or succumb to his sales pitch.

Kevorkian watchers say it was common knowledge that he was looking for a way to recover from last spring’s organ-harvesting debacle, in which the poisoned, mutilated kidneys he offered dashed the hopes of hundreds of would-be recipients. Kevorkian himself said he had “something big” planned after the new Michigan law took effect Sept. 1. In the Nov. 3 referendum, Michigan voters upheld the legislative ban by a narrow margin. Opinion polls taken in Michigan since “60 Minutes” show the margin has widened. The true believer is repelling his supporters.

In contrast, there is Oregon, the only state that permits physician-assisted suicide and where support for the year-old law remains solid, even showing modest growth. In part this is because the law has been used judiciously, sparingly. Only 10 patients, judged to be terminally ill but of sound mind, have obtained life-ending drugs from their doctors. Eight used them, two died without needing to. Nine different physicians wrote the prescriptions. There has been no mass suicide, no one doctor taking on a Kevorkian-like role as guru of death. And the Oregon law did not pass because of one person. It is the result of a 25-year campaign launched by the late Gov. Tom McCall. Its approval was preceeded by Oregon becoming a national leader in hospice and other care for the terminally ill.

This is important to Maine, which may become the second state to enact a death-with-dignity law, now that Michigan is so thoroughly repulsed. Opinion polls taken early this year showed strong support for a proposed Maine law; a petition drive now is under way to get it on the ballot. The approach in Oregon is what works. Unfortunately, it is the ghoulish antics of Kevorkian that get televised.