ABC’s Good Morning America appears to have pulled out all the stops in helping attorney John West promote his recently-published book, “The Last Goodnights.” The book is a memoir detailing how he “assisted” the suicides of both his parents about ten years ago.

Before I get into the specifics of the coverage, I’d like to offer several caveats in regard to memoirs. First, there have been several high-profile memoirs over the past few years that were revealed to contain significant fabrications – events that never happened, but that made better reading. A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey, is probable the most notorious example. “Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived” by Herman Rosenblat was another memoir whose central plot point was a total fabrication – making national news last December.

So it’s probably wise to be a little cautious in accepting the total veracity of any memoir that is as totally unverifiable as John West’s account of his role in his parents’ deaths. The only people who could verify his account – his mother and father – are dead. I doubt that it would be possible to verify they died through anything other than natural means, even with exhumation and autopsies. Ten years is a long time.

Today, GMA has done its best to make West’s memoir financially rewarding. The site has video, a written story and a book excerpt. Makes me wonder if ABC is already in negotiation for film rights.

From the story:

For attorney and author John West, his parents were lifelong sources of comfort, wisdom and pride.

But West has been keeping a 10-year-old secret about his parents from everyone, including his two sisters, which he is revealing for the first time in a memoir called “The Last Goodnights.”

West helped his terminally ill parents commit suicide, a crime in the state of California, where the deaths took place. In revealing his actions, West acknowledges he could face prosecution.

“I’m hopeful that that won’t occur, but there is the possibility,” West said in an interview that aired on “Good Morning America” today. “The statute of limitations for assisted suicide has run [out] but the prosecutors can charge you with just about anything. There is no statute of limitation for murder, for manslaughter, probably certain drug offenses.”

Nice drama, there, but as I noted before, it’s doubtful that anyone could prove these deaths were suicides or homicides at this stage, even if law enforcement was inclined to do more than yawn about the allegations he’s leveled against himself. Michael Phelps stands a far more significant chance of dealing with the wrong end of law enforcement than West does.

According to the book excerpt on the site, Wells’ relationship with his father was strained, due to his father’s long-term philandering, culminating with introducing an illegitimate son at gatherings of friends and family over the last two years or so of his life. Wells’ father had been diagnosed with cancer – according to Wells it was in an advanced state and he’d been given a prognosis of less than six months to live. Neither the story nor the excerpt make clear the nature or the extent of the “help” he rendered his father. According to Wells, the alleged suicide has been kept a secret – even from Wells’ mother.

In the same timeframe, Wells’ mother had been diagnosed with alzheimers. Admittedly depressed over the loss of her husband and the road ahead of her, she asked Wells for the same “assistance” given the father – assistance she knew nothing about.

Here’s one place the GMA brainiacs obviously glossed over the obvious. As someone recently diagnosed with alzheimer’s, Wells’ mother’s death was years away – far from a conventional definition of “terminally ill.”

They blow it here, too:

Assisted suicide, even if intended as an act of mercy, is still considered a crime in most states. Oregon and Washington have legalized it, and a Montana judge’s decision to do so is under appeal.

But even in those states, physicians, not family members, are authorized to help carry out the act, by prescribing a dose of lethal pills to terminally ill patients who have been counseled and who have, in some cases, undergone psychiatric evaluations.

First, Oregon is the only state in which legal assisted suicides have actually occurred. Second, as readers of this blog know, psychiatric evaluations in Oregon have become nonexistent and a major study indicates that people with clinical depression have been given lethal doses.

Finally, West gives this as the motivation for writing his book (nothing about money, notoriety or speaking gigs, oddly enough):

West said he wrote “The Last Goodnights” hoping that it will spur debate about assisted suicide laws.

“I’m saying I don’t want you to ever have to do what I did and don’t break the law but change the law,” he said. “The law needs to be changed.”

Again, the ABC robots fail to challenge an obvious flaw in his logic here. His mother, even by his own account, wouldn’t have been “eligible” for assisted suicide in either Oregon or Washington. What will happen in Montana is anyone’s guess. Maybe the law West is advocating for is the one that’s been introduced in New Hampshire, that defines “terminally ill” so widely that his mother or anyone else with a serious disability or condition would “qualify” for assistance in offing themselves.

Maybe they’ll clarify some of this when ABC does the made-for-TV-movie. –Stephen Drake