Kervorkian Assisted Suicide Case Study

Although Kervorkian was suspended from his medical license, none of this stopped him from assisting suicides. He was unable to gather the medicine he needed for the Thanatron so he created a new way to go about assisting suicides. He created the Mercitron, which let loose carbon dioxide inside a gas mask. When Michigan found out about his new machine, they made a law specifically for Kervorkian to stop his experiments. As a result, Jack was put in jail twice that year, but bailed out by a lawyer named Geoffrey Fieger. That year he was prosecuted four times for assisting suicides. Three of the four were cleared and the fourth was a mistrial. Kervorkian wanted to be imprisoned in order to show how cruel the society is. Meanwhile, the Michigan legislature enacted a law that if someone was to assist a suicide, it would be a felony and the person would have a maximum five year prison sentence or pay a ten thousand dollar fine. Nonetheless, Kervorkian still continued assisting suicides and the courts continued to press criminal charges. In 1998, he wasn’t the least bit shy to go on the CBS television news program 60 minutes where he assisted a death. He assisted Thomas Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease. On the recording he told them each of the administered drugs he was using and dared …show more content…
Although his actions spurred national debate on the ethics of euthanasia and hospice care, he was said to of helped one hundred and thirty people die peacefully. Once he became fascinated by death and the act of dying, he just couldn’t stop. He lived a pretty crazy life and lived it life to the fullest. It was said that he published more than thirty articles or journals in his lifetime. Although many people hated the idea of even hearing Dr. Jack Kervorkian’s name, he made an impact on patients lives and forever changed the way we look at assisted suicide even to this