Dr. Jack Kevorkian was acquitted earlier this month by a Michigan jury in the assisted suicides of two people suffering from terminal illness. The case turned on the question of whether Kevorkian's assistance was intended to cause death or to relieve suf fering. Being reasonable persons, the jury perceived that disease was already taking care of the former charge, and Kevorkian was guilty only of the latter. Helping someone to die at a chosen and prepared moment with their loved ones around them is the act of a dedicated doctor. Forcing them to needlessly undergo the extended torture of death by bone cancer is not.
The question of choice in death was impressed upon me recently, when a chaos of ambulances and twisted metal I encountered on my way home marked the site of an obviously fatal accident. Tragedies like this are abrupt and brutal. These people had been of fered no choice. However, for the patients Kevorkian was placed on trial for helping, this sudden and perhaps only briefly painful impact would have represented a merciful release.
After my mother died relatively quickly from cancer several years ago, I was comforted to know that she need not suffer any longer. When the alternative is a lingering and debilitating death, nobody should be denied the basic human right to a swift relea se with a minimum of suffering. I believe that we can live on only in the memories of those we leave behind, and I would hope to be able to leave my friends and relatives with an image of the sentient person they have known - not lose my dignity and huma nity simply because no doctor is caring enough to help me depart when I feel the time has come.
It's no wonder that Kevorkian has been dismissed by many as an obsessive and dangerous kook - death has only recently begun to emerge from the firmly-closed closet marked "taboo" into which it was thrust around the 1930s, when instead of staying home we b egan dying tidily in hospitals. A lucrative funeral industry ensures that the corpse is not seen until it looks its newly restored best, and the subject of terminal illness and preparation for our own deaths has been viewed as ghoulish, or downright impr oper. Death with dignity? Nonsense. We need barely be aware of death. What could be more dignified than total invisibility?
Fortunately, the realization that death is inevitably a part of life is slowly gaining ground. The purdah curtains are being torn down, and the terminally ill and their relatives are finding new choices for care, and a public forum for their concerns. S adly, legislation guaranteeing patients the right to assisted death is still lacking. Plugs can be pulled, and life support turned off, but only after life has been artificially extended and the patient has been denied even a natural death.
Sherwin B. Nuland in his book How We Die speaks of the isolation that has been imposed on the dying. In a series of case studies, he shows that both patient and family often tacitly shun the realities of approaching death. At best, extended pain, bodil y deterioration and total dependence are accepted as tragic but inevitable.
In contrast, Final Exit, by the Hemlock Society's founder Derek Humphry, offers autonomy to the terminally ill. With startling frankness, he reveals a catalog of suicide methods, ranging from hoarded prescription medications to a simple plastic bag over the face. What is startling here is the fact that we are presently reduced to subterfuge (as well as exposing helpers to possible criminal charges) if we wish to be spared needlessly prolonged pain and suffering.
Right now, only a courageous doctor like Jack Kevorkian will responsibly relieve suffering by allowing terminally ill patients to decide for themselves how and when they will die. We expect doctors to help us into the world, and yet we debar them from he lping us out of it when we are ready to make an informed and painless exit.
Like everyone, I would prefer to go quickly and easily when my time comes - but if, instead, I am some day faced with terminal illness and the prospect of long and futile hospitalization, I hope I will have a Jack Kevorkian to turn to for help. In terms of dignity, professionalism, and loving support, a caring doctor surely has a lot more to offer than the makeshift methods of Derek Humphry.
Kaye Patchett is a creative writing senior. Her column appears every other Monday.