Slashdot Mirror
Jack Kevorkian Dead at 83
theodp writes "Jack Kevorkian, the pathologist said to have had a role in more than 130 assisted suicides, has died from kidney-related complications on the eve of the 21st anniversary of his first assisted suicide. Kevorkian, who served more than eight years in prison for second-degree murder, had his story told in the HBO movie You Don't Know Jack. His antics and personality brought a certain approachability to a grim subject — the fundamental right of terminally ill patients to choose to die. 'I will debate so-called ethicists,' he once said. 'They are not even ethicists. They are propagandists. I will argue with them if they will allow themselves to be strapped to a wheelchair for 72 hours so they can't move, and they are catheterized and they are placed on the toilet and fed and bathed. Then they can sit in a chair and debate with me.' RIP, Dr. Jack."
The cruel irony about this debate is that people who want to (or need to) die are sentenced to an indeterminate amount of suffering before they actually die and people convicted to death have their lives taken for a crime they should spend the rest of their natural lives contemplating in a steel and concrete cell.
The way the most despised are treated says a lot about a society, but the way a society treats it's least despised says a lot more.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Even if he was terminally ill, why should he be expected to end his life? Did he promote euthenasia, or choice of euthenasia?
Captcha: altruism