Dear editor,
This is in response to John M. Crisp's article, “Death comes quietly for Kevorkian,” in the June 9 edition of The Korea Times. In the fourth paragraph the author states, "Kevorkian was less concerned with what lies beyond than with how we get there ..." The reader needn't be so sure.
According to a report by the Detroit Free Press, 60 percent of the people who committed suicide with Kevorkian's help were not terminally ill.
The report further asserted that Kevorkian's counseling was too brief (with at least 19 patients dying less than 24 hours after first meeting Kevorkian) and often lacked a psychiatric exam, even when Kevorkian had been alerted that the patient was unhappy for reasons other than their medical condition.
The report also stated that Kevorkian failed to refer at least 17 patients to a pain specialist after they complained of chronic pain, and sometimes failed to obtain a complete medical record for his patients, with at least three autopsies of suicides Kevorkian had assisted with showing the person who committed suicide to have no physical sign of disease.
Furthermore, in a 2010 interview with Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and CNN senior medical correspondent, Kevorkian stated, "What difference does it make if someone is terminal? We are all terminal."
Later the author states that "Many of us have never gotten over … submission to the terrible will of God" as if that's a bad thing. Given the author's statement earlier in the article that no one knows what lies beyond death, it's actually a very good thing (and a sign of intelligence).
As for the author's claim that "Kevorkian faced a hard battle in one of the most religious countries in the world," a 2008 survey by Trinity College revealed that 24 percent of Americans were atheist, agnostic or deistic, a Gallup poll shows that only 21 percent of Americans attend Church services weekly or more often, and 25 percent never do.
Bradley L. MacDonald
bl_macdo@hotmail.com