| OUR VIEW |
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Whatever one may think of Jack Kevorkian's cause -- to end state bans on physician assisted suicide -- his latest stunt promoting it crosses several significant lines.
And now it's up to prosecutors to make sure he doesn't cross any more. They can't just let him go. The former Michigan pathologist has helped 130 people kill themselves. Many were fatally ill. A few were not. But no jury ever has convicted him. For in assisting them, Kevorkian provided only the tools for them to take their own lives. And he always claimed his only purpose was to relieve their pain and follow their wishes. Not so in the case of Thomas Youk, a victim of Lou Gehrig's disease, who died by lethal injection in September. For the first time, Kevorkian not only hooked up the tubes, but he administered the lethal chemicals himself. As bad, Kevorkian had an ulterior motive for taking Youk's life -- publicity. Kevorkian videotaped his sessions with Youk, including the death scene, and offered the tape as an exclusive to CBS. The snuff suicide film provided a sweeps' week rating bonanza for 60 Minutes Sunday. It also gave Kevorkian a platform to attack his home state's assisted-suicide ban, passed at the time of Youk's death. ''They must charge me,'' he says now. ''Because if they do not, that means they don't think it's a crime.'' Such zealotry raises all sorts of questions about what message Kevorkian was delivering to Youk. With his mixed motive, he may well have subtly, if unwittingly, manipulated Youk to prefer death over life. It's just such messages that advocates for disabled people fear will be delivered to those with debilitating conditions if physician-assisted suicide is legalized. They worry that people will commit suicide to stop burdening their families rather than out of a real desire to die. That opens the door to euthanasia. While taking one's own life is a personal and private decision, euthanasia gives others the power to make that choice. And that is dangerous. It could lead to people being killed carelessly or against their will. That's why government should neither endorse nor ban assisted suicide. Instead, it should let doctors set ethical guidelines that ensure an individual's decision about when to end life is made with knowledge of alternatives; after careful consideration, including psychological counseling; of their own free will, and only as a last resort. Finally, the act of taking one's life should be by one's own hand. Kevorkian's latest antic doesn't match that deliberate process. As a pathologist, he doesn't know all the medical alternatives available. And as an advocate of a cause, he may not have provided them. In killing Youk, Kevorkian says, ''This could never be a crime in any society which deems itself enlightened.'' But no enlightened society can let anyone take law and life into his own hands as Kevorkian has done, especially when what was best for Youk may have fallen prey to Kevorkian's thirst for publicity. |