Marta Russell
> Wall Street Journal, November 25, 1998
>
> A Snuff Film Comes to Prime Time
>
> By Wesley J. Smith, a lawyer for the International
> Anti-Euthanasia Task Force and author of "Forced
> Exit: The Slippery Slope From Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder"
> (Times Books, 1997).
>
> Mike Wallace morphed into Jerry Springer last Sunday
> night, as "60 Minutes" aired a videotape of Jack Kevorkian killing
> Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
>
> The decision to air the program--essentially a snuff
> film--was protested by disability-rights activists, several media
> commentators and some religious groups. A CBS spokesman brushed off the
> criticism, claiming that "60 Minutes" was merely "allowing Kevorkian to
> tell his story." It's a flimsy excuse. The program had two clear
> purposes: to boost ratings and to serve as propaganda for legalizing
> euthanasia.
>
> It certainly accomplished the former
> goal, rewarding "60 Minutes" with an audience of 15.7 million
> households--some three million more than usually
> watch the program. This was the newsmagazine's best night of the season,
> and will
> translate into extra income for CBS.
>
> If viewers wanted hard-hitting
> journalism to go along with their voyeurism, they were disappointed. The
> acerbic Mr. Wallace, who usually can be counted on to ask hard questions,
> treated Dr. Kevorkian with kid gloves. This is not surprising. It was Dr.
> Kevorkian who sought out Mr. Wallace, a well-known advocate of legalized
> euthanasia, as his
> interlocutor. Indeed, the CBS newsman is quoted in Monday's Philadelphia
> Inquirer as saying he has a mutual assisted-suicide pact with his wife if
>
> either is ever given a terminal diagnosis.
>
> Thus Mr. Wallace accepted at face value Dr.
> Kevorkian's assertion that it was right to kill Mr. Youk in order to
> prevent him from choking to death on his own saliva. But this "kill or
> choke" premise--which no doubt terrified people with Lou Gehrig's disease
> and their
> families--was simply untrue. Doctors can prevent patients from choking or
>
> suffocating through proper medical treatment.
>
> Mr. Wallace also failed to mention that Michigan,
> like every other state, outlaws active euthanasia of the kind that Dr.
> Kevorkian inflicted on Mr. Youk. An initiative to legalize assisted
> suicide was
> defeated this month, 71% to 29%.
>
> Dr. Kevorkian is often depicted in the media as a
> retired doctor who helps "terminally ill" people commit suicide. In
> truth,
> some 80% of his victims were not terminally ill. Most were disabled,
> often
> with multiple sclerosis, and some weren't even sick. In 1991 Dr.
> Kevorkian put
> to death 58-year-old Marjorie Wantz on the strength of her
> complaints about pelvic pain. Upon autopsy, however, no organic cause for
> her
> suffering could be found. Not coincidentally, previous to seeking out
> Dr. Kevorkian, Wantz had been hospitalized for mental problems. Another
> victim, 39-year-old Rebecca Badger, came to Dr. Kevorkian from California
>
> because she thought she had multiple sclerosis. Again, her
> autopsy revealed no pathology whatever, though she had been known to
> suffer from depression.
> One wonders whether "60 Minutes" would have shown
> videotapes of these killings, which would likely have garnered less
> sympathy for euthanasia and more public relations problems for CBS.
>
> Another little-known fact about Dr. Kevorkian is his
> vicious bigotry against disabled people. He has often stated that
> paraplegics
> and quadriplegics are "pathological" if they do not want to die, writing
> in
> a court statement that such deaths "can only enhance the preservation of
> public health and welfare."
>
> Such loathing of disabled people led Dr. Kevorkian to
> kill 45-year-old Joseph Tushkowski, a quadriplegic, and participate in
> the harvesting of his kidneys (an exercise described as a "mutilation" by
>
> Oakland County, Mich., medical examiner L.J. Dragovic). This was of a
> piece
> with Dr. Kevorkian's ultimate goal, which is to experiment on the people
> he is killing while they are still alive--a procedure he calls
> "obitiatry."
> Needless to say, none of this made it into Mr. Wallace's piece.
>
> Where it should register, however, is with Oakland
> County public prosecutor David Gorcyca, who was elected to office
> on a pledge not to prosecute Dr. Kevorkian. Mr. Gorcyca had contended
> that there was insufficient evidence, legal basis, or public support
> to put Dr. Kevorkian behind bars. The Youk killing (where Dr. Kevorkian
> administered the fatal dose personally), and the overwhelming vote
> against
> euthanasia in the recent referendum, should make short work of these
> arguments.
>
> On another level, however, this story is no longer
> about Dr. Kevorkian. Rather, it is about us. The eventual denouement
> will
> say a great deal about what kind of society we are and intend to be. Are
> we
> a nation that still believes in the rule of law and the overriding
> importance of protecting
> vulnerable human lives? If so, we will reject Kevorkianism and express
> our
> disgust toward "60 Minutes's" tasteless exercise in tabloid journalism.
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