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It’s how you ask the question. With the announcement that Michigan’s “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian, will be released from prison on June 1 after eight years behind bars for second-degree murder, the AP asked the public what it thinks today about a right to die. With the proposition that “Sometimes there are circumstances where a patient should be allowed to die,” 68 percent of the thousand adults polled agreed. But asked, “Do you think it should be legal or illegal for doctors to help terminally ill patients end their own life by giving them a prescription for fatal drugs?” a narrow plurality, 48 percent said legal, while 44 percent said illegal.
Secondly, the people Kevorkian was “assisting” weren’t necessarily “terminally ill.” Not Dead Yet dusted off a 1997 Detroit Free Press series, “The Suicide Machine.” The paper said its investigation “debunks perceptions that Kevorkian only helps people who are terminally ill–likely to die within six months–or are in agonizing pain. In fact, at least 60 percent of Kevorkian’s [47] suicide patients were not terminal. At least 17 could have lived indefinitely and, in 13 cases, the people had no complaints of pain.”
