American Medical News – “Kevorkian leaves mixed legacy” (NDY Quoted)

Since I was interviewed for this article in American Medical News, I was actively looking for its appearance online this morning.  The interview with the reporter lasted almost 45 minutes and covered a lot of ground, most of which didn’t get included in this relatively short article.  It is an attempt to explore the “legacy” that Kevorkian left us.

Below are come excerpts from the article Dr. Kevorkian leaves mixed legacy by Carolyne Krupa:

The death of pathologist Jack Kevorkian, MD, left many pondering the long-term influence of a highly controversial figure and what role he may have played in transforming the nation’s perception of dying.

Some think his aggressive push for physician-assisted suicide forced the medical profession to take a closer look at care of the terminally ill. But others say Dr. Kevorkian lacked a sense of proper medical ethics and that his actions were motivated more by a desire to advance his agenda than compassion for patients.

There were four “experts” interviewed – and I am one of the four.  The other were Michael Paletta, MD, “vice president of medical affairs for Hospice of Michigan and executive director of the hospice’s Maggie Allesee Center for Quality of Life;” Peg Sandeen, Executive Director of Death With Dignity National Center, one of the two largest assisted suicide advocacy organizations in the US; and Timothy E. Quill, MD, who is described as “a professor of medicine, psychiatry and medical humanities at the University of Rochester (N.Y.) School of Medicine and Dentistry” and also as someone who “supports physician-assisted death only as a last resort.” (more on this at the end of the blog entry)

Here’s the part from me, with some comments and clarification:

Dr. Kevorkian was particularly harmful to people with disabilities, said Stephen Drake, a research analyst with Not Dead Yet. The Rochester, N.Y.-based organization opposes legalized assisted suicide and was founded in 1996 in response to Dr. Kevorkian’s acquittal in the assisted suicides of two women with nonterminal conditions.

Dr. Kevorkian’s image has been sanitized by the media, which painted him largely as a hero to the suffering, Drake said. Many ignore that before he became famous, Dr. Kevorkian wrote extensively about his desire to allow human experimentation, he said.

Another concern is that Dr. Kevorkian and the media never looked at the social factors around the people whose suicides he assisted, Drake said. Other factors, such as marital or mobility problems, may have contributed to their desperation and helplessness, he added.

Ignoring those social factors demonstrates some of society’s prejudices to assume that simply having a disability would be cause enough to want to die, without looking more in-depth at the individual’s personal troubles, Drake said.

For the record – I never refer to Jack Kevorkian as “Dr.”

Readers of this blog will know that the comment about Kevorkian’s advocacy of human experimentation is incomplete.  His agenda was always to use “planned death” (execution, infanticide, assisted suicide, etc.) as an opportunity to keep someone alive and sedated for a few hours or days while experimenting on them, followed by organ harvesting.  His assisted suicide activities were part of that agenda.

Likewise, when “mobility” is mentioned as a social problem, I wasn’t talking about the impact of the mobility impairment itself, but the frustration, anger and despair that was a factor in at least one person who went to Kevorkian who waited endless months for a proper wheelchair – which finally arrived a few days after his death at Kevorkian’s hands.

Also, Kevorkian’s acquittal wasn’t the only catalyst for the formation of NDY.  There were also two court cases going to the Supreme Court arguing for a constitutional right to assisted suicide.  One of those cases was Vacco v. Quill – that’s the same “Quill” who is one of the “experts” interviewed for the article.

Quill’s limited indentification in terms of his relevance to the story is a problem in this article and how he is often identified in the press.  Quill doe not just “support” assisted suicide, he is a leading advocate of legalization and has been one since 1991. The summary of his efforts put toward legalization are summarized neatly on the Death With Dignity National Center website, where he is on the board of directors for both the organization and its Political Action Committee:

Quill has lectured widely and published numerous articles, including a 1991 New England Journal of Medicine article about “Diane,” a dying patient who requested assistance in dying. Quill is the author of four books, Physician Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice (Johns Hopkins University Press, co-edited with Margaret Battin), Caring for Patients at the End of Life: Facing an Uncertain Future Together (Oxford University Press), A Midwife Through the Dying Process, Stories of Healing and Hard Choices at the End of Life (Johns Hopkins University Press), and Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge (W.W. Norton). He was the lead physician plaintiff in the New York State legal case challenging the law prohibiting physician aid in dying—Quill v. Vacco.

This also means that two out of the four sources used for this article are essentially both representatives of Death With Dignity National Center.  As I mentioned before, Quill is often described this way in assisted suicide articles and it is dishonest.  In an article about assisted suicide, someone who is a prominent political advocate of legalization should be identified that way.

If Tim Quill were really ethical, he would insist on being identified that way so that readers would be better able to evaluate his comments in relation to his position as a stakeholder in the debate.  –Stephen Drake