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Name: Jack Kevorkian
Age: deceased
Occupation: pathologist
Last Seen: Royal Oak, MI
Awarded For: giving the sick their wings
Age: deceased
Occupation: pathologist
Last Seen: Royal Oak, MI
Awarded For: giving the sick their wings
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To some, Dr. Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian was far from being a hero. Instead, he was viewed as the devil's assistant.
But, if you had an inoperable disease and you were living your life as a vegetable, he was purely an angel.
Born to Turkish parents in Pontiac, MI on May 26, 1928 - exactly 53 years to the day prior to my birth - Jack Kevorkian knew that he would *ahem* make a killing at assisted suicide. He knew that there were many people with irreparable diseases that were given no more hope on planet Earth. In the late 1980's, the pathologist started advertising his services and in 1990, he assisted his first suicide, a 54-year-old Alzheimer's patient named Janet Adkins. Although he was charged with murder, his charges were dropped due to Michigan having no assisted suicide laws at the time.
Despite having his license revoked in 1991, he continued his practice, and performed 130 more assisted suicides with the infamous Suicide Machine spewing drugs through an IV or through a gas mask. Kevorkian was well-guarded by his famous attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, who told everybody that Kevorkian had no grounds of imprisonment because his patients took the final action before their deaths while hooked to the machine. Fieger - the brother of the late lead singer of the 1970's new wave group The Knack - even ran for governor of Michigan in 1998 and lost.
Kevorkian fought long and hard to keep on killin'. He was in front of a judge four times and was acquitted thrice. However, after a 60 Minutes piece aired showing Kevorkian performing euthanasia on a man with Lou Gehreg's Disease with a controlled substance that he was no longer allowed to carry since his medical license was revoked, plus the fact that the patient didn't carry out the final stages of his death, Kevorkian was charged with second degree murder and sentenced to up to 25 years in prison in 1999. After serving just eight years in a prison in Coldwater, MI, he was paroled, mainly because he contracted Hepatitis C while doing bloodwork and was expected to die within a year. He was released for good behavior and on the condition that he wouldn't provide care for persons over 62 or disabled, or - you guessed it - killed anybody.
Since his release, Kevorkian gave lectures on his life, assisted suicide and other topics associated with his career to many universities and TV shows. There was even a movie based on his life, You Don't Know Jack, which starred Al Pacino as Dr. Death.
Kevorkian died June 3rd at the age of 83 from a blood clot. He had been battling kidney problems for years due to his Hepatitis. He never married and had no survivors.
There was even a well-known punk-ska band named for him.
I was on a message board last week, and when news came out about his death, one person said that he hopes that Kevorkian's burning in hell. Another person even asked that person who made them God, Jr. The point is, Only the Good Lord can decide the fate of Jack Kevorkian, who was agnostic. No doubt, his death did create some mixed reaction. The holier-than-thou is celebrating while others are telling them "now, hold on a minute..."
Thing is, it's a tough decision to let a family member rot with zero-to-no chances of surviving their disease or to just let them live another day. When there's no quality of life left, you might as well call it a life. In the end, the suffering ends and the sufferer is freed. While the religious heretics will form their own opinion on this subject, they don't realize that they're not in the sufferer's shoes.
But, Jack Kevorkian did.
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