Jack Kevorkian Paroled - Is He Taking Apppointments :) ?

[Boghos]

Assisted suicide advocate Kevorkian paroled

Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:16 PM ET

By Kevin Krolicki

 

DETROIT (Reuters) - Jack Kevorkian, a fiery assisted suicide advocate, will be released from a Michigan prison in June after serving eight years for murder and vowing never to help the terminally ill take their own lives again, state officials said on Wednesday.

 

Known as "Dr. Death," Kevorkian, 78, touched off a firestorm of controversy in the 1990s for presiding as a medical doctor in dozens of suicides and advocating the legalization of such procedures in the United States.

 

Kevorkian has been serving a 10- to 25-year sentence for second-degree murder for giving lethal injections to a man with Lou Gehrig's disease who died with Kevorkian's help in suburban Detroit in 1998.

 

A representative of the Michigan Parole Board interviewed Kevorkian on Thursday. The state parole board then approved a recommendation Kevorkian be paroled in June, the earliest possible date for his release, officials said.

 

Russ Marlan, a spokesman for Michigan's prison system, said Kevorkian acknowledged he had broken the law during a flamboyant eight-year campaign to legalize assisted suicide.

 

"He said that anything that would bring him back to prison, he will avoid. He said prison is no place to live," Marlan said.

 

Kevorkian will not be allowed to counsel anyone on suicide as a condition of parole, Marlan said, although he remains free to speak out on the issue of assisted suicides.

 

Marlan said Kevorkian, who will serve a 24-month parole, indicated that he planned to write and speak on the question of assisted suicide once free. But Marlan added: "I think he sees his role in this issue as diminished."

 

In 1997, Oregon became the first and only state to legalize physician-assisted suicide in the United States.

 

FAILING HEALTH

 

Kevorkian, who claims he assisted in 130 deaths, had thwarted four attempts by prosecutors to convict him and flouted a state ban on assisted suicide that was passed in a bid to stop him.

 

But in 1999 a Michigan jury convicted Kevorkian of second-degree murder after he videotaped himself administering lethal shots to 52-year-old Thomas Youk and sent the tape to the CBS news show "60 Minutes."

 

In previous cases, Kevorkian had arranged to have those seeking to die under his supervision pull a string or otherwise start the process that led to their deaths from carbon dioxide or injected drugs.

 

Kevorkian said he had hoped that the jury would acquit him of the 1998 case and set a legal precedent for assisted suicide in the United States.

 

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm had repeatedly refused to pardon Kevorkian or commute his sentence.

 

Kevorkian's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, petitioned four times for his client's early release, saying Kevorkian was unlikely to survive in prison because of his failing health.

 

In June 1990, Kevorkian first attracted notoriety when the retired pathologist helped a 54-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease kill herself in the back of his rusty van.

[Takoush]

Although He meant well and he fought against the system whereas doctors both in Europe openly did what he did for years and in the United States as well, but it is unChristianlike to do such things.

 

We must leave all those things to God as he is our creator.

[Stormig]

Although He meant well and he fought against the system whereas doctors both in Europe openly did what he did for years and in the United States as well, but it is unChristianlike to do such things.

 

We must leave all those things to God as he is our creator.

I wouldn't make assumptions as to someone else's religious affiliation.

[Takoush]

I wouldn't make assumptions as to someone else's religious affiliation.

I was actually speaking about some Christian members on this Forum and about myself.

Edited December 14, 2006 by Anahid Takouhi

[Anoushik]

It's wonderful to read about this news. He doesn't deserve to be in jail. He's a great humanitarian who'll be remembered in history as such.

[Takoush]

It's wonderful to read about this news. He doesn't deserve to be in jail. He's a great humanitarian who'll be remembered in history as such.

anoushik jan; frankly when I read this I was happy for him too.

[Aubépine]

Humanitarian?? That sounds too far fetched, but I agree that he didn't deserve that prison sentence. Better from one's own hand than from another's.

[Zartonk]

He's Alive?!

[Arpa]

Dr. Kevorkian has joined his "customers".

Assisted suicide advocate Kevorkian dies at age 83

 

ROYAL OAK, Mich. (AP) — A lawyer and friend of Jack Kevorkian says the assisted suicide advocate has died at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83.

Mayer Morganroth tells The Associated Press that Kevorkian died Friday morning at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized.

Kevorkian was released from a Michigan prison in 2007 after serving eight years for second-degree murder. He claims to have assisted in at least 130

 

Self portrait;

http://th09.deviantart.net/fs70/150/i/2011/137/e/d/jack_kevorkian_by_mireynos-d3gkb62.jpg

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/drdeathchapters.htm

 

http://th09.deviantart.net/fs70/150/i/2011/137/e/d/jack_kevorkian_by_mireynos-d3gkb62.jpg

 

At times macabre;

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1W1RNTN_en&tbm=isch&q=jack+kevorkian+paintings&revid=135238593&sa=X&ei=9uzoTcrEEILPgAfI2YWLAQ&ved=0CDgQ1QIoAA&biw=1053&bih=475

In his signture blue sweater;

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/03/12/art.kevorkian.gi.jpg

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/03/12/art.kevorkian.gi.jpg

Edited June 3, 2011 by Arpa

[Yervant1]

His nickname "Dr. Death" should be changed to "Dr. Merciful".

 

Jack Kevorkian, assisted suicide advocate, dies at 83

 

03/06/2011 9:20:56 AM

 

CTV.ca News Staff

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan physician who caused a storm of controversy with his advocacy for assisted suicide, has died.

 

 

Kevorkian, who was known by the nickname "Dr. Death," died between 2 and 2:30 a.m. Friday morning, the Detroit Free Press reports.

 

The 83-year-old had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and heart troubles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, told the newspaper that Kevorkian appeared to have died from pulmonary thrombosis.

 

Morganroth and Kevorkian's niece Ava Janus were reportedly by his side when he died.

 

Kevorkian, who grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, died at the Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit.

 

He first earned the nickname "Dr. Death" in the 1950s when he began advocating for prisoners on death row to become participants in painless medical experiments that would begin when they were conscious, but end in death.

 

In 1986 he again courted controversy by mounting a campaign around the benefits of euthanasia. Kevorkian even invented a suicide machine he called the Thanatron, which delivered a dose of saline, followed by a painkiller and finally a lethal dose of potassium chloride poison.

 

While neither the machine nor the concept was ever widely accepted by the medical community, Kevorkian eventually made headlines in the 1980s for his plan to set up a franchise of "obitoriums," where terminally ill patients could end their lives with the help of physicians.

 

But the most sensational media attention came in 1990, when Kevorkian helped Janet Adkins, a 45-year-old Alzheimer's patient, to end her own life.

 

Kevorkian assisted in her suicide inside his Volkswagen van in a public park, with Adkins dying of heart failure after Kevorkian administered a lethal dose of poison.

 

Kevorkian soon became an international celebrity over the incident, but was also charged in Adkins' murder. However, the charges were later dismissed do to a lack of clarity on Michigan's assisted suicide laws.

 

He continued helping terminal patients commit suicide, and his medical license was eventually suspended. However, Kevorkian continued his crusade despite laws that toughened various states' stance on assisted suicide.

 

He was in court numerous times, was jailed on occasion, and was eventually convicted of second-degree murder in 1999. Kevorkian was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but was released in 2007 after serving just over eight years of his sentence.

 

After his release Kevorkian continued his advocacy, joining the lecture circuit and speaking about his experiences with assisted suicide.

[Arpa]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/

 

We also remember when he was severely criticized for comparing the "holocaust" where the victims were "anasthetized" with gas, vs the Genocide where, among many murderous atrocities pregnant women's abdomens were bayonetted....just for "fun".

 

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/death_and_dying/51184/3

Edited June 3, 2011 by Arpa

[Azat]

he was a very wise man

[Arpa]

Did Dr. Jack subscribe to any organized traditional church or was he an agnostic universalist?

Observe that his funeral service was held a cemetery chapel with a generic service.

I don’t see any Vardapets, Kahanas , neither do I see Evangelical pastors or Catholic priests.

 

http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/2011/06/kevorkian-memorial-service-set-friday-near-detroit

 

Kevorkian memorial service set Friday near Detroit

FILE - In this Dec. 3, 1990 file photo, Dr. Jack Kevorkian sits in his lawyer's office in Southfield, Mich., after Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson announced that he would be charged with murder in the death of a woman who committed suicide by using a device of the doctor's. Kevorkian's lawyer and friend, Mayer Morganroth, says the assisted suicide advocate died Friday, June 3, 2011 at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83.

A public memorial service for assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian is planned Friday at a suburban Detroit cemetery.

Kevorkian friend and lawyer Mayer Morganroth tells the Detroit Free Press the ceremony is being held at 9:30 a.m. at White Chapel Memorial Cemetery in Troy.

Morganroth says there originally was no plan for a public memorial, but a worldwide response led to the scheduling of the event.

The 83-year-old Kevorkian died last Friday at Royal Oak's Beaumont Hospital, where he was being treated for pneumonia and kidney problems.

Kevorkian has said he attended about 130 deaths. He went to prison after a 1999 conviction for second-degree murder and was paroled in 2007.

Source URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/news/2011/06/kevorkian-memorial-service-set-friday-near-detroit

[Yervant1]

The Peninsula Gateway (Gig Harbor, Washington)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News

January 16, 2013 Wednesday

 

 

A different Kevorkian hopes to confront end-of-life issues in Gig Harbor

 

by Will Livesley-O'Neill, The Peninsula Gateway (Gig Harbor, Wash.)

 

 

 

Jan. 16--Kristine Kevorkian of Gig Harbor has an unusual -- and very

recognizable -- last name, especially for someone involved with

end-of-life issues.

 

The most famous Kevorkian is Dr. Jack, the famed pathologist and

advocate for physician-assisted suicide. Kristine shares Armenian

heritage but has no family connection to the so-called "Dr. Death."

 

"Everybody and their brother would always ask if we were related," she said.

 

And because she considers herself a kindred spirit, she refers to the

late doctor, with his permission, as "Uncle Jack."

 

Kristine has confronted end-of-life issues since 1993, when, as a

student at Humboldt State University in northern California, she began

an internship in a hospice. She went to the school to study marine

biology and made the transition into social work, and she was assigned

the internship without any say in the matter.

 

"At the time, I didn't even know what a hospice was," Kristine said.

"But I took to it like a fish to water."

 

She knew right away it was what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

 

"Working with the dying was fascinating to me," she said. "To be given

that honor, to be with somebody when they're dying -- they are the

most courageous people in the world."

 

Naturally, her name attracted attention for its connection to the

famous, and often infamous, doctor. Their relationship began in the

mid-1990s, after Kristine had been working in hospice for a few years,

including some time at a hospice in Everett, when she sent Jack a

letter of support at the height of the controversy over his assistance

in voluntary euthanasia procedures.

 

Jack was arrested in Michigan a few years later on charges of

second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a

patient, on camera, in a video broadcast on 60 Minutes.

 

Kristine reached out to the doctor's assistant while he was in prison,

and she slowly built a friendship with other members of Jack's inner

circle.

 

"We all really connected," Kristine said, adding that she grew close

with his staff members.

 

After she watched a news report critical of the doctor, Kristine wrote

an angry -- and non-proofread -- letter to Jennifer Granholm, the

governor of Michigan at the time. The letter found its way to Mike

Wallace of 60 Minutes, who had become closely acquainted with Jack.

 

Kristine soon found herself answering the phone to hear Wallace's

voice on the other end.

 

"It was really surreal," she said.

 

Kristine told Wallace she was embarrassed that she hadn't taken more

time to craft a thoughtful defense of the doctor in her letter, but he

told her not to worry.

 

"He said, 'Don't ever apologize. You have so much passion,' " Kristine recalled.

 

Jack heard about the letter, and a few years after he was released on

parole, Kristine finally got to meet him in person, at a 2011 lecture

at UCLA.

 

Kristine said the doctor told her to "take over where I left off" -- a

mandate, she said, to spread the word about end-of-life care.

 

"People thought he was a kook, and he wasn't," Kristine said. "He saw

a need. And, from my experience in hospice, there certainly is a

need."

 

The connection between hospice care and assisted suicide may not be

immediately apparent, and it can even seem contradictory -- much of

Kristine's work involves helping patients with a natural death, while

euthanasia induces death sooner.

 

But, Kristine said, her goal is to provide the dying with a level of

control over their experience, to manage their pain and the pain of

their families. She said that was Jack's goal as well.

 

"In hospice, there is some control that people can have in dying,"

Kristine said. "It doesn't have to be all about the pain and tubes and

everything."

 

She said she's seen medical professionals handle grief well, and she's

seen many examples of grief handled poorly.

 

"If you end up with a physician who isn't trained well (in grief and

loss), particularly in communication, you have someone who will have a

huge impact on the family," Kristine said. "I remember the people that

took care of my mother. That's never going to go away. If you have

someone who does a poor job, the family will end up thinking, 'What

could we have done differently?'"

 

Kristine believes better education is the solution to the problems she

identifies in end-of-life care. It's been the mission of her career

since she first became involved in hospice work.

 

After she studied at both Humboldt State and Delaware State, she

received her doctorate in thanatology, the scientific study of death.

 

No traditional accredited American universities offered a thanatology

program at the time, Kristine said, so she studied through Union

Institute and University, a nontraditional distance-learning school

where her doctoral committee consisted of experts from her wide field,

including the famed spiritualist Ram Dass.

 

During the past decade, Kristine has taught classes on grief and loss,

bereavement and aging issues at Antioch University in Los Angeles, the

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the University of Hull in

England, where she helped to create continuing-education modules for

the National Health Service's end-of-life care program.

 

She moved to Gig Harbor this past May, for family reasons, and she

wants to bring her educational training to Tacoma Community College.

She has submitted a continuing education course proposal, for a

six-session class entitled "Dying and Death with Dr. Kevorkian," that

would serve as an introduction to thanatology and a discussion of the

grieving process, communicating death to children and other

end-of-life issues.

 

Tacoma Community College already offers classes in estate planning,

aging, caregiving and other related issues, Kristine said.

 

TCC has not yet responded to her proposal.

 

"I'm excited that they have all that stuff," Kristine said. "But let's

delve a little deeper."

 

Shawn Jennison, TCC's director of marketing and communications, said

the continuing education review board is still in the process of

looking over hundreds of submissions for classes.

 

"They haven't said no to anyone," Jennison said.

 

Kristine hopes that, if her class is approved, both medical

professionals and those outside the field will enroll. She believes

greater exposure to her teachings -- part of the legacy she upholds

from "Uncle Jack," to harness some command over death -- would benefit

everyone.

 

"It's offering somebody control (over the dying process)," she said of

her life's work. "And if people are taught this, they'll understand

the control they can have."

[Yervant1]

JACK KEVORKIAN'S PAPERS TO BE MADE PUBLIC TO BETTER UNDERSTAND ROLE OF 'DR DEATH' IN RIGHT-TO-DIE DEBATE

The assisted suicide advocate died in 2011

22 hours ago 13/10/15

The right to die advocate passed away in 2011 Getty

Throughout the course of his lifetime, Dr Jack Kevorkian was nothing
less than an enigma.

To many, the advocate of assisted-suicide was pioneer of humane
thought and ethics. To others he was a ghoulish figure, dismissed as
"Dr Death".

Now, the public is to get an insight into both the man and and his
thinking after it was announced that an American university has
obtained his papers and is set to make them public for the first time.

The Associated Press said that the University of Michigan library
announced said it wanted to provide access to ordinary people to help
them understand his role in the right-to-die debate.

The Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor said Ava Janus, Mr
Kevorkian's niece and sole heir, donated the collection, which has
documents from throughout his life. It includes correspondence and
manuscript drafts as well as files on assisted suicides, including
medical histories, photographs, video and audio.

"Long before Jack Kevorkian was known as "Dr Death," he was a child of
Armenian immigrants, a successful student, a graduate of the University
of Michigan Medical School, a musician, composer and scientist,"
the library's director, Terrence McDonald, said in a statement.

"The release of his papers will allow scholars and students to
understand the context of and driving forces in an interesting and
provocative life."

The collection, which spans eight feet, also includes published
works, photographs, court records, news coverage and interviews. The
assisted-suicide files, which involve cases between 1990 and 1998,
include medical histories, photographs, and video and audio recordings
of consultations with patients, the AP said.

READ MORE

Dr Jack Kevorkian: Practitioner of assisted suicide dubbed 'Dr Death'
Profile: Jack Kevorkian - A bit of his own medicine Monitor: Dr Jack
Kevorkian's campaign to legalise euthanasia

Mr Kevorkian died in 2011 in suburban Detroit at age 83. He sparked
the national right-to-die debate with a homemade suicide machine
that helped end the lives of about 130 ailing people, using the term
"medicide" to describe physician-assisted suicide.

"Many of the medicide patients and their families - who remain very
close to this day - are still advocates of their family member's
choice to die, so anonymity was not an issue," said Olga Virakhovskaya,
Bentley's lead archivist who processed the materials.

"We felt very strongly that by not providing access to this collection
and to the medicide files, we would be choosing to hide a very
important story."

Mr Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 for
assisting in the 1998 death of a Michigan man with Lou Gehrig's
disease. He was released from prison in 2007

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jack-kevorkians-papers-to-be-made-public-to-better-understand-role-of-dr-death-in-right-to-die-a6693046.html

[Yervant1]

KEVORKIAN ARCHIVE: 'DR. DEATH' POSTHUMOUSLY REDEEMED AFTER 5 STATES LEGALIZE ASSISTED SUICIDE?

NewsMax
Nov 30 2015

By Clyde Hughes | Monday, 30 Nov 2015 12:26 PM

Jack Kevorkian's archives of papers, video and audio files - much
of it dealing with his work on assisted suicides that earned him
the nickname "Dr. Death" and eight years in prison - is being made
available to the public, now that five states have legalized much of
what he had been doing.

Kevorkian stirred controversy in the 1990s by assisting in the
suicides of more than 100 terminally-ill patients, reported UPI in
October when the archives were opened at the University of Michigan.

He was acquitted on three different occasions in cases related to
assisting patients with suicide.

He was eventually convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 in Oakland
County Circuit Court in Michigan and served eight years in prison,
said The New York Times. He died in 2011 at age 83.

"Long before Jack Kevorkian was known as 'Dr. Death,' he was a child of
Armenian immigrants, a successful student, a graduate of the University
of Michigan Medical School, a musician, composer and scientist,"
said Terrence McDonald, director of the Bentley Historical Library,
in a news release on the archives.

"The release of his papers will allow scholars and students to
understand the context of and driving forces in an interesting and
provocative life," McDonald added.

The library said Kevorkian's niece Ava Janus donated the materials,
spanning from 1911 to 2014.

Kevorkian used the term "medicide" to refer to assisted suicides
and it can be found throughout his files dealing with more than 100
terminally-ill patients from 1990 to 1998, according to the library.

"Many of the medicide patients and their families - who remain very
close to this day -are still advocates of their family member's choice
to die, so anonymity was not an issue," said Olga Virakhovskaya,
Bentley's lead archivist who processed the materials.

"We felt very strongly that by not providing access to this collection
and to the medicide files, we would be choosing to hide a very
important story."

In October, California became the fifth state that allows doctors
to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients, said the
Times. California joined Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont in
allowing the practice.

http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/jack-kevorkian-archive-dr-death-assisted-suicide/2015/11/30/id/703917/