Epress.am News from Armenia
Assisted-suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, whose controversial tactics earned him the nickname Doctor Death, has been hospitalized with kidney problems and pneumonia, local media reported Thursday.
Kevorkian, who spent more than eight years in jail for the murder of a man whose videotaped assisted suicide was aired on national television, claims he actively helped 130 people to die, AFP reports.
Kevorkian, who turns 83 next week, was rushed to William Beaumont Hospital in suburban Detroit, Michigan on Wednesday night after feeling weak, his attorney told the Detroit News.
While Kevorkian is not in “grave danger,” his health is not good, Mayer Morganroth said. The retired physician was hospitalized a few weeks ago and suffered a relapse Wednesday.
“He’s not 100 percent, but he’s getting better,” Morganroth said, adding Kevorkian is expected to return to his apartment where he lives alone in a few days.
Kevorkian forced the United States to confront the ethical issues surrounding how best to treat the pain and suffering of the terminally ill when he went public with his suicide machines in 1990 and the videos of his patients begging him to help them die.
The desperation that drove of dozens of dying people to travel to Michigan to be hooked up to his “mercy” machine — sometimes in motels, sometimes in Kevorkian’s Volkswagen van — helped convince many of the need for a right-to-die.
But Kevorkian’s antics alienated others and fueled criticism.
He dropped bodies off at hospitals and dumped them in parks and abandoned buildings. He brandished the kidneys of a man he’d helped die during a 1998 press conference saying “first come, first served,” a reference to organ donation.
Then he taped himself actually injecting drugs into ALS patient Thomas Youk — even though he had been stripped of his medical license — and sent a copy to CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Critics called it a snuff film. The judge overseeing the case accused Kevorkian of arrogance and disrespect for society.
Kevorkian’s campaign to legalize physician assisted suicide has had limited success. While his native Michigan rejected a proposal shortly before he went to trial, the state of Oregon passed the Death With Dignity Act in 1997 and the state of Washington followed suit in 2008.