Over 50: The Controversy over Dying With Dignity

By Gary Geyer, Editor-in-Chief LetLifeIn.com “After spending eight years in prison for helping terminally ill people end their lives, “Dr Death”, as he is sometimes called, has recently been released.” At “Let Life In” we believe that people over 50 should have the right to experience everything life has to offer— the good things as well as the things that are less than good. But should that include the right to end one’s life, to ‘let life out,’ so to speak? We think so. Unfortunately, it appears that The New York Times doesn’t agree. At least in the way they say Dr. Kervorkian has gone about it. The occasion of Dr. Kervorkian being released from prison has rekindled the controversy. Basically the Times’s feeling is that Dr Kervorkian’s methods were wrong. They said, on their editorial page, that he was reckless and performed assisted suicides badly by not validating the patient’s request and evaluating the patient's suffering thoroughly. That may or may not be true. However, At LetLifeIn.com, we believe The Times has done a disservice by focusing on Kervorkian's methods rather than the cause he advocates. The controversy is over the question, “should people who are terminally ill and in pain have the right to request help in ending their lives with dignity?” We think they should. It seems to us at LetLifeIn.com, that what Dr Kervorkian has done is bring the subject to the nightly news and to the front page of every newspaper in the country. The Times says that he has "besmirched the movement." We say, "What movement?" The Times may know of one but the rest of the world doesn't. Unfortunately, the media for the most part hasn’t been as supportive as they could have been. It was they who, after all gave Kervorkian the nick name “Dr. Death,” which has ‘tabloidized’ the issue. The fact is that every time Dr Kervorkian’s name is in the news the subject comes up and that's good. At least their is dialogue. Kervorkian said he is extremely upset that in the years he was in prison, we as a nation did nothing to pass new laws allowing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. We agree. He refers to the government as “tyrants” and calls the public “sheep.” He refers to his critics as “religious fanatics or nuts.” (For the record, we at LetLifeIn.com don’t think The New York Times falls into either of those categories.) We think The Times should have made it perfectly clear that they believe that a person should have the right to die with dignity and that assisted suicide should be a patient’s right as well as a legal option should he or she want it. In criticizing Kervorkian’s methods instead of the cause, The Times has obscured the issue. <<