HBO Is Making Sure We Don’t Know Jack About Jack Kevorkian

Caveat: I haven’t seen the HBO “docudrama” You Don’t Know Jack yet, but the many reviews I’ve read, along with the info on the HBO site devoted to the film, are painting a pretty clear picture – namely, that people who watch this movie probably won’t know Jack Kevorkian at all. 

I grew increasingly suspicious as almost every article and review labeled Kevorkian as an advocate for the “terminally ill.”  Even back in 1997, when the Detroit Free Press published its series The Suicide Machine, it was clear that most of Kevorkian’s body count consisted of women with nonterminal chronic medical conditions or disabilities.  Here’s a synopsis of what the reporters at the Detroit Free Press found:

• Counseling is often limited to phone calls and brief meetings that include family members and friends.
• There was no psychiatric exam in at least 19 Kevorkian suicides, including several in which friends or family had responded that the patient was despondent over matters other than health.
• In at least 17 assisted suicides in which people complained of chronic pain. Kevorkian did not refer the patient to a pain specialist.
• Kevorkian’s access to such records varied widely; in some instances, he received only a brief summary of the attending physician’s prognosis.
• Autopsies of at least three Kevorkian suicides revealed no anatomical evidence of disease.
• At least 19 patients died less than 24 hours after meeting Kevorkian for the first time. 

By the estimation of the investigative reporters, at least 60% of the people who committed suicide with Kevorkian’s help weren’t terminally ill.

So why is everyone referring to him as an advocate for the “terminally ill?”

It’s because that’s what HBO is telling them on its website (and probably implies in the docudrama):

You Don’t Know Jack begins as 61-year-old former pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian (Al Pacino) launches his crusade to provide what he considers to be a humane and dignified option for the terminally ill – assisted suicide.

As the data from the Detroit Free Press (and corroborated by others) shows, HBO is misrepresenting Kevorkian’s “mission” in the promotional material.

There is evidence already of other misrepresentations as well.  One of the more detailed reviews appears in Obit, an online publication dealing with matters related to “life, death, transition.”  In the current edition, Julia M. Klein, in her review A Killing, or a Mercy?, shares a scene from the film that allegedly explains Kevorkian’s motivation for facilitating the suicides of so many people:

There are no flashbacks showing the doctor, who eventually claimed to have assisted 130 suicides, as a child or young man. But the screenplay gives us an early indication, later explained, that Kevorkian’s chief motivation for his law-and-custom-defying actions was regret at having stood by helplessly as his mother endured a prolonged, excruciating death.

Well, that’s a good story, but it may be just a story.  And it’s a far cry from the whole story.  What the film apparently avoids recounting is this: Kevorkian spent a couple of decades obsessed with the establishment of a medical specialty labeled “obitiatry” – a specialty involving causing the controlled deaths of individuals and exploiting the situation as a chance for live human experimentation on people who could be treated as though they were dead.

In 1991, he published a book titled Prescription Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death.  Here is a very good summary of the contents from Kirkus Reviews – available at the Amazon link for the book:

Kevorkian, gadfly of the medical profession and inventor of the “suicide machine,” speaks his mind on the ethics of death. Its title notwithstanding, this is not primarily a discussion of euthanasia–or “medicide,” the author’s term for euthanasia performed by professional medical personnel–but, rather, largely a defense of his position that death-row inmates should be given the option of execution by general anaesthesia, thus permitting use of their bodies for experimentation and harvesting of their organs. Since his days as a medical resident, Kevorkian has attempted to convince legislators, prison officials, and physicians of the value of this approach. However, the art of persuasion is not Kevorkian’s forte; indeed, he seems unable to resist attacking and insulting those who disagree with him, referring to his medical colleagues as “hypocritical oafs” with a “slipshod, knee-jerk” approach to ethics. Those seeking a thoughtful discussion of euthanasia will not find it here, but Kevorkian does offer a revealing look at gruesome methods of execution. (Readers who have the stomach for it may be intrigued by his account of the many attempts to determine how long consciousness endures in severed heads.) Kevorkian concludes with a recounting of his development of the “Mercitron” (as he has named his suicide machine), his reasons for creating it, and his difficulties in promoting its use. A model bioethical code for medical exploitation of humans facing imminent and unavoidable death is included in the appendix. An angry doctor’s rambling and repetitious harangue, certain to arouse the ire of the medical establishment. (emphasis added)

As his own writing demonstrates, Kevorkian had wanted to be able to practice euthanasia and/or assisted suicide for a very long time – but that was just part of his overall agenda.  The touching scene recounted in the review is – at best – a very incomplete explanation of Kevorkian’s motivation.  At worst – it’s a total fabrication meant to delude viewers – and making Jack Kevorkian out to be someone he isn’t – and never was.

Unfortunately, there’s even less hope than usual that there will be any real critical analysis of Kevorkian and the movie from journalists.  It has nothing to do with a “liberal media” or anything like that, though.  It has more to do with mega corporations, the conflation of journalism and product promotion, and how that contaminates an important story like this one.  More about that tomorrow.  — Stephen Drake