Friday, June 01, 2007

Dr. Death goes free


After serving eight years of a 10-25 year sentence, Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been released from prison. He has promised not to help anyone kill themselves anymore, and if he does it's a violation of his parole and he goes back to the slammer.

Assisted suicide is a hotly debated thing, although it has cooled off a bit since Kevorkian went to the big house. The whole Terry Schiavo public circus brought up some aspects of the debate again, but that was short lived (pardon the rather tasteless pun).

Me? I know I have a great fear of living as an invalid or slowly circling the drain with cancer or some other wasting disease. As such, I am pretty cool with assisted suicide, and ol' Dr. Jack.

3 comments:

Miles Orion said...

And of course the reason this is an issue is killing your self is against the law.

Of course, unless someone helps you they can only do something if you fail, or they catch you before you try. Could you imagine someone being sent to prison for killing themselves AFTER they've done it?

Where's the logic?

Memophage said...

One of the benefits to living in Oregon is that it's the only state to have passed a Death with Dignity act.

I know it's fraught with difficulty to actually use (only about 300 people have taken advantage of it since it was passed in 1997), but it gives me a surprising amount of peace of mind, knowing that the state I live in recognizes that there are valid situations in which a terminally ill person might willingly make the decision not to endure any more pain.

Wiwille said...

So where's this review of Laurel Canyon that was promised?