RE: Dr. Kevorkian (Full Version)

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puella -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 4:56:43 PM)

You can only be comitted after you have been prosecuted, it is a judge who makes that ruling.  Suicide is illegal.



maybemaybenot -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 6:37:26 PM)

So who nees Dr. K ? If one is so inclined they can easily put their loved one out of their misery without him. Put said euthanasia vitim in the car and hook the exhaust system back into the car.
Of the 200 plus patients Dr. K. killed only three were lethaly injected. All of the rest were killed by carbon monoxide/gas. I have no idea why those who are such big supporters of Dr. K, see him as an icon. Most any 5th grader could hook some one up to die the way he killed them.
My own personal belief is if you want to euthanize yourself, by all means plan ahead and do it. Or have a family memeber or other designee inject, gas or overdose you. If one believes so strongly in it, they should ne happy to perform the euthanizing act themselves as opposed to having to seek out a Dr. K. He gased people, pure and simple. An easy task.

                                   mbmbn



farglebargle -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 6:41:25 PM)

Maybe you wanna make sure you do it right, and don't fuck up the process?

I mean, it's not like abortion, with a million manuals available at any library.




Aswad -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 9:09:44 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: puella

Hrm... well good.  He shouldn't have been in prison to begin with.


Depends on how you view it.

The judicial system isn't there to evaluate ethics so much as it is there to enforce the social contract (the law).

Whether, ethically speaking, he should have been in there... probably not, IMO. IIRC, those patients were competent to give a DNR order, so they should be competent to not push the button, so to speak, if they didn't sincerely want to die. I think it's a definite certainty that the right to decide over one's own life extends to deciding not to live it, with the question being one of determining what the person's decision is, and whether the person made it, or someone else. Consider depression, for instance, where transient episodes can make a person suicidal, while their rational decision doesn't change at the time.

The case where he administered the lethal injection himself would be potentially questionable, however. One would set higher standards for killing someone who consents to being killed than for providing someone with the means to kill themselves.

quote:

As a person who pretty much grew up watching her mother die a slow and painful death due to cancer, I think there does come a time where euthanasia is the right choice.


Hopefully, voluntary euthanasia?

quote:

There was nothing right about keeping her in a state of semi-conscious continual torture... but the law is the law.


Sometimes, there is no right. That's life. Voluntary euthanasia might be ethical, but a doctor making a decision that a patient shouldn't live any more is no different than any other form of murder in that regard: one person decides that it is wrong for another to live.



Aswad -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 9:17:27 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: cjenny

Sure, except sometimes people don't die even from a direct shot to the brain. NP, but who is going to clean up the blood gore & smashed grey matter? Who finds the body? Some little kid? Little old lady? [...] Hope the body gets found fast, decomposition is nasty stuff.


My preferred method is this:

Swallow 5g of phenobarbital, wait until it starts working, then start injecting a fast-acting opioid until you are semi-conscious. Lie down, wait, fly. Alternately, inject a fast-acting opioid until you are barely able to function, then inject a full syringe of veterinary euthanasia type sodium pentothal in the thigh muscle. Diamorphine makes a good choice of opioid, I've heard.

Either way, unless someone finds you within 6-12 minutes, you are dead.

There is no specific antidote to barbiturates, and they depress brain function to the point of clinical brain death in sufficient doses, including stopping breathing and other such functions. The opioid will also supress breathing, but more importantly, it will suppress the suffocation response (hypoxia panic) that would otherwise occur during aspiration, and it will remove any sensation of pain, along with removing any sensation of fear.

Simple, reliable and irreversible.

Also, it leaves a corpse that is "nice and tidy", which will cause less trauma for whoever finds it and whoever gets the chore of identifying it. Not to mention that when the pathologist talks to the family, s/he can honestly say the person died without suffering or fear, giving them one less thing to worry about.



Aswad -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 9:18:40 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: lockedaway

You aren't "prosecuted", you are committed to a mental health facility for being a danger to yourself or others for 72 hours or, perhaps, longer.


Not neccessarily an improvement, I daresay, having friends that have been committed for various reasons.



Aswad -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 9:21:57 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: maybemaybenot

So who nees Dr. K ? If one is so inclined they can easily put their loved one out of their misery without him. Put said euthanasia vitim in the car and hook the exhaust system back into the car.


Presumably, the thing about Dr. Kevorkian is that he provided that service for people who were unable to do so themselves, and who were under such supervision that they couldn't have done it themselves. Similarly, family might also be prevented. More to the point, he assumed the legal responsibility. The family should not have to bear the burden of prosecution after the loss of a loved one, and that is the burden he took from them.

That said, carbon monoxide poisoning is not the only thing in that exhaust, and it will be a lot less pleasant than pure carbon monoxide.



Emperor1956 -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (5/31/2007 9:33:32 PM)

FR:  A slightly different point of view.  Puella, I agree entirely with your thoughts, but JK was a lousy poster child for a good cause.  Disclaimer time:  I worked on one aspect of his case, served as an expert on medical ethics issues, and actually met the man and his defense team.  And you know what...he was CREEPY.  Forget principle, forget the higher purpose...the man was very very creepy.  He also had an unexplained (and largely unexplored by the media) penchant for "counselling" women over men.  Many of his "patients" were depressed disabled women who did NOT have a terminal illness (other than the great terminal illness we all suffer from).  His patient selection was deeply troubling, and there were more than a few cases where he seemed very eager to make sure that someone who began the death counselling process wound up dead. 

The other thing was that he could have avoided prosecution and continued his practice had he taken a less controversial stance when the Michigan authorities began investigating him.  He was a complete "in your face" person, and revelled in confrontation.  If you had been involved in the investigations, it made a great deal of sense that he was finally convicted, not so much because what he did was wrong or illegal, but because he so desperately wanted to be "punished" by the State.

E.



Aswad -> RE: Dr. Kevorkian (6/5/2007 1:55:42 PM)

Sounds like potential validation of my argument that there are probably a lot of serial killers and sexual predators (sometimes folded into one) out there that go unnoticed for a huge bulk of time; given the right circumstances, one could definitely rack up a body count with nobody the wiser. It's just a matter of intelligence and restraint. Just because most we catch lack one or both doesn't mean all of them lack it, it may just as well imply that we aren't catching those who don't lack it.



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