The inventor of the controversial "suicide machine" outlines his startling views on planned death and its potential impact on organ harvesting and medical experimentation in this graphic and well-argued commentary. Photographs.
For many years Dr. Kevorkian was at the center of the red-hot debate over physician-assisted suicide. The inventor of the "suicide machine" stirred up both admiration and controversy. His "Deaths with Dignity" won him the accolades of the pro-choice movement. Other groups, like Operation Rescue, the AMA, the Hemlock Society, and especially the Michigan State Legislature, insisted that Kevorkian had gone too far. His much-publicized campaign to assist the terminally ill to commit suicide eventually led to his prosecution and imprisonment.
In Prescription: Medicide, the famed "suicide doctor" talks about why he was so committed to his struggle. He addresses the need to assist the terminally ill to die, how death row inmates should be allowed to donate organs after their deaths, and the need for medical reform to create a rational program of dignified, humane, beneficial planned death.