Euthanasia according to Kevorkian

Overview

Doctor Kevorkian is the person known as an active protagonist of euthanasia. Joan M. Brovinsand Thomas Oehmke as a Kevorkian’s admirers wrote a book: Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s RX Death(Lifetime Books, Hollywood 1993). The book has been translated in Czech by Vladimír Smrž in1996 and has been issued in Prague’s publishing house Brána with the name of Vražda, nebomilosrdenství? Důvěrná zpráva o radikálním propagátorovi a praktikovi eutanazie.A purpose of the paper is an analysis of the first 18 cases of euthanasia or assisted suicidecarried out from the point of view of their reasons, euthanasia methods description and theirevaluation and comparison of Kevorkian’s criteria with the reality given, and more detaileddescription of Kevorkian’s personality.The analysis of Kevorkian’s cases enabled to formulate some conclusions:1. Euthanasia and assisted suicide methods done by Kevorkian do not guarantee to avoidviolent dying.2. There is a high rate of single or widowed people among euthanasia candidates (a majorityof women).3. Anxiety and depression is present in many of them.4. Kevorkian does not pay attention to common ethical issues, he gives those of his own.5. In spite of his own ethical rules, Kevorkian does not follow them.6. Euthanasia discussion is accompanied with high level of emotion.7. Kevorkian created a new speciality - obitiatria.8. Assisted suicide is called by him as medi-cide (he derivates it from term as homi-cide,geno-cide, sui-cide or bacteri-cide) what means that he speaks rather on killing of medicalscience then on killing by use of medical means.In the discussion, some aspects of Kevorkian’s activities in broader context are mentioned.Detailed knowledge of mercy killing carried out helps readers to create their own opinion of thethema given.

Key words:
euthanasia.