Jack Kevorkian
Jack Kevorkian
Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian was an American pathologist, euthanasia activist, painter, author, composer, and instrumentalist. He is best known for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicide; he claimed to have assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He was often portrayed in the media with the biased name of "Dr. Death"; however, many consider him a hero, as he helped set the platform for reform. He famously said, "Dying is not a crime"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDoctor
Date of Birth26 May 1928
CityPontiac, MI
CountryUnited States of America
I've seen schizophrenics who are so hopeless, you couldn't cheer them, and their lives are miserable and they end up as suicides. That's not right.
I hate to say this, but I'll repeat it: After death, all we know that you do is stink.
I would not want to live with a tube in my neck and not be able to move a finger. I wouldn't - that to me is not life.
When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.
I learned to smile by going through hell. Now I know what hell is and you don't. I can't tell you how it is, cause you can't do it with words.
Anytime you interfere with a natural process, you're playing God. God determines what happens naturally. That means when a person's ill, he shouldn't go to a doctor because he's asking for interference with God's will. But of course, patients can't think that way.
Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.
As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified.
Listen, when you take my liberty away, you've taken away more-something more precious than life. I mean, what good is a life without liberty? Huh? None.
All the big powers they've silenced me. So much for free speech and choice on this fundamental human right.
Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and its seductive promise of an after-life of heavenly bliss, most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death.
I'm trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.
My aim in helping the patient was not to cause death. My aim was to end suffering. It's got to be decriminalized.
I always said all my life if I wasn't born and they gave me the question I'd say I don't want to be born.