Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 288 - Doctor Death: Jack Kevorkian and the Right to Die Debate

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Death! How comfortable are you thinking about it? Talking about? What rights should be afforded to you when it's your time to "meet your maker?"  Jack Kevorkian thought you,  under certain conditions, should be able to have a physician help you peacefully release yourself from a life of unbearable, incurable pain. Do you agree? Or do you think everyone needs to soldier on, no matter what they're suffering from, until the bitter end? There are a lot of people on each side of the right to die debate. We explore both sides, and also look into the history of how we humans have faced death, in addition to the history of Dr. Death - Jack Kevorkian. No one did more in the 20th century to get America thinking and talking about death. Should living in the land of the free include having the freedom to terminate your time on Earth in a way of your choosing that could include having your doctor give you one last, very final injection?  I learned a lot this week. Hope you do to! The Bad Magic Charity of the month is New Orleans Community Fridges  will be this months recipient of the Bad Magic Donation! We donated $13,900 to them and $1,500 to our new scholarship fund. Such a cool charity, providing free food and drink to those who are food insecure. Visit nolacommunityfridges.org for more info!TICKETS FOR HOT WET BAD MAGIC SUMMER CAMP!  Go to www.badmagicmerch.comWatch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NRpfn-i3-oUMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Could someone nickname Dr. Death actually have been a good guy? It's a name of fitting a serial killer or maybe a pro wrestling villain. We've even talked about a serial killer here on Time Suck that had that nickname Harold Shipman. Today, we'll be talking about another Dr. Death Jack Kavorkin. And Jack Kavorkin would end up dedicating his life's most important work to killing people, sort of. Born in 1928 as a child of two Armenian immigrants fleeing the Armenian genocide, Kavorkin would soar past the common realm of being your average doctor and squarely into the territory of being a man on the cutting edge of something that was either depending on your right to

die perspective, great or terrible. Fastened with death from a young age, Kavorkin would become best known for his staunch advocacy of a patient's right to die when they wanted to, especially for patients with incurable terminal illnesses. Out of less than $50 worth of supplies, Gavorkin fashioned a death machine, he called the sanatron. An injection contraption that, with the push of a button, administered a heart-stopping dose of the chemical potassium chloride. To work in assisted deaths of 130 terminally ill people between 1990 and 1998, as an

ardent believer in doctor-assisted suicide, sometimes called euthanasia. He believed that the Hippocratic oath to do no harm in the case of someone who was severely severely ill and in agony was not to prolong their suffering, but to help them find a peaceful way out of it. The State of Michigan did not agree with his viewpoint. After Kavorkin helped a woman with Alzheimer's die in the summer of 1990, he was quickly charged with murder. But then the case was dropped due to the fact that Michigan didn't have a law explicitly

against physician-assisted suicide. They quickly passed a law against it, and as Kavorkin kept offering his services, authorities kept arresting him. Kavorkin was tried four times for assisting suicides between May 1994 and June 1997. Over and over, when the cases went to trial, the jury would be shocked to hear the families of the dead testifying four Dr. Kavorkin's defense. They said they were glad that their loved ones had gotten some final control in the middle of their illnesses, that Kavorkin had helped their loved ones had the dignified death they wanted. But at the same time, Kavorkin was cocky as

shit. He could get a wee bit self-righteous and attitude that doesn't often play out well in the court of public opinion doesn't often sit well with a judge or jury either. As the cases kept coming and he kept getting more and more national exposure, he would treat patients, help them die, and openly flaunt the law. When he showed up for his later trials, he did so in homemade pilgrim-like costumes, the protest laws against euthanasia, he felt were old-fashioned, outdated, pure-tanical. He went as far as to air and assisted suicide on 60 minutes, daring law enforcement to stop him. And then they did. On November 25, 1998, Kavorkin was charged with second-degree murder and delivery of a

controlled substance, the lethal injection. Because Kavorkin's license to practice medicine had been revoked eight years previously, he was not legally allowed to possess the controlled substance. After just a two-day trial, the Michigan jury found Kavorkin guilty of second degree homicide. Judge Jessica Cooper sends Kavorkin to serve 10 to 25 years in prison. He would serve eight years before being released on parole with conditions that stipulated that he could no longer help anyone die and couldn't be an expert opinion when the news covered the controversial subject. Interesting stipulations. Why was the judge so afraid he'd keep talking about

this subject? Shouldn't we be free to talk about whatever we want in a society that openly places so much value on freedom? A place that literally calls itself the land of the free and this gag order was placed upon him even though according to his patients and their Families, Kavorkin had done nothing wrong. He had been helping them. Had he? But what's he really helping? Kavorkin was known by his colleagues to be a bit of a mad scientist type. Going back to when he was experimenting with blood transusions from corpses in the 1970s, he'd also advocated for doing live dissections of convicted criminals. And with his ideas, there was a lot of pushback from those around him, often on the grounds of the slippery slope argument.

Once we start killing people legally who meet certain right to die criteria, where does assisted euthanasia stop? Do we go from a society that does so much to try to stop suicide to one that promotes it? Holds it in high regard, expects it in certain situations. Was Dr. Death a good guy? A good doctor? We dissect the strange and complicated life

of Dr. Kavorkin, analyzed the right to die argument and examine how America views the notion of mortality. Right now on another morally gray edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday, meet Sachs. Welcome to the Colt of the Curious. Dan Kalman's a master's sucker, bowed Django's pooper scuba, Dr. Death's laboratory janitor, Lucifina, a Boudoir photographer, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimron, Hail Lucifina, praise what Django's and Glory be to Triple M. Recorded this episode right before tickets for our Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp.

Go on sale. I hope there are none left by the time you hear this, but if there are, you can find them at badmagicmerch.com. Come get wet and hot with me and the team this August. More details at badmagicmerch.com. It is crazy that we're doing this. You can also come see me in Charlotte this weekend. I'll be at the Comedy Zone this Thursday Friday Saturday, March 24th through the 26th.

Hope I had a great time in Atlanta this last week. Guess what I did? Then April 15th and 16th in Tempe, Arizona, April 23rd in Missoula. That show with the Wilma almost sold out. April 28th through the 30th in Raleigh and the rest of the spring dates just added Springfield, Missouri, May 26th through the 28th Blue Room Milwaukee Improv. June, I believe, add that date,

all at Dancomans.tv. Last quick announcement thing, some merch. It's past weekend, I was digging around in Nimrod's closet and I found a box of old PETs from when Nimrod was a principal at times like high school. Remember that? I found it in three different colors. So head on over to badmagicmerch.com to check them out.

All the names have faded so there's room for you to write your own in. And then you can tag us on socials with hashtag timesuckhighschool to relive your school pride. No visible sweat stains from what we can tell. And now for another topic, our dear Patreon Space Lensers have voted in after unlocking the voting feature of the Time Suck app, the topic of death, and also the strange, death-focused life of Dr. Jack Cavorkian, aka Dr. Death. Depending on what side of the physician assisted suicide debate you fall on, you might think that Dr. Jack of Orkin is a righteous hero, or you might think he's a wicked killer.

On the hero side of the argument, I mean, Jack did help people, for sure he did. As a pathologist, someone studying the causes and effects of disease, he did for years and years, and helped sick people get well. And then later as an inventor and champion for terminally ill patients right to die, he did almost no doctor at the time would do. He stepped up and helped people who were in a lot of pain. People typically weeks or months,

or sometimes just a few short days away from dying, sometimes years, you know, as a shelter for ourselves, and he helped him find some last measure of what they perceived as dignity. Kavorkin's longtime lawyer, Jeffrey Figer, was a member of the Kavorkin as a hero camp, and he would once say this about him. I've never met any doctor who lived by such exacting guidelines as Kavorkin. He published him in an article for the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry in 1992. Last year he got a committee of doctors, the physicians of Mercy, to lay down new guidelines, which he's scrupulously follows. However, Fier also stated that Kavorkin found

it difficult to follow his own exacting guidelines because of, quote, persecution and prosecution, adding he's proposed these guidelines saying this is what ought to be done. These are not to be done in times of war and were at war. And he was a war with the American government. Essentially, he felt that Kavorkin wanted to do everything by the books, but felt that the books were unfair and outdated and in order to get to a place where a citizen's suicide was accepted, Kavorkin had to be willing to sometimes go against the law. And unlike a madman with thirst for blood, his tractor sometimes portrayed him as, Kavorkin had to be willing to sometimes go against the law. And unlike a madman with the thirst for blood,

his tractor sometimes portrayed him as, Kavorkin didn't just kill people indiscriminately. He didn't end the life of anyone that asked him to because he was overcome with a desire to kill a bloodlust. He said himself that he declined four out of five suicide requests on the grounds that the patient needed more treatment, or that their medical records had to be more thoroughly checked. But critics have said that his methods were not as foolproof as he thought. According to a report by the Detroit Free Press, 60% of the patients who died with the Kavorkins' help were not terminally ill and at least 13 had not complained of pain.

This report further asserted that Kavorkins's counseling was too brief, but at least 19 patients dying less than 24 hours after first meeting Kavorkin and that there was no psychiatric exam in at least 19 cases, five of which involved people with histories of depression, though Kavorkin was sometimes alerted that the patient was unhappy for reasons other than their medical condition. Kavorkin thought to the free though, had an axe to grind against him. Now, they were wrong about those stats and assessments. The 1992 Corcoran himself wrote that it was always necessary to consult a psychiatrist when performing a assisted suicide because a person's mental state is of paramount importance.

And during his trials, people who wanted him to help them die testified that because of his rigorous standards, including psychological testing, he did not help them. And families of people he did help die, testified that he did in fact put patients through rigorous screening before assisting them. The Detroit Free Press also reported that Kavorkin 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. Kovorkin had assisted on showing the person who committed suicide to have no physical signs of disease. And the one woman, Rebecca Badger, a patient of Kovorkin's and a mentally troubled drug abuser, had been mistakenly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The report also stated that Janet Atkins, Kovorkins first, youth in Asia, patient had been chosen without Kavorkin ever speaking to her, only with her husband.

And then when Kavorkin first met Atkins two days before her assisted suicide, he made no real effort to discover whether Miss Atkins wished to end her life as the Michigan court of appeals put it in a 1995 ruling, upholding an order against Kavorkin's activity. This based on other coverage of Miss Atkins, Mrs. Atkins does not seem to be true though. Kavorkin was polarizing and it seemed like those who didn't like him

really went out of their way to demonize him. And there was a lot of people in Michigan who did not like him, including members of the Detroit Free Press, it seems. People with the economists also didn't seem to care, formed the economists and say, studies of those who sought out Dr. Kavorkin, however suggest that though many had a worsening illness, it was not usually terminal. On top, he showed five people had no disease at all.

Little over a third were in pain. Some presumably suffered from no more than hypokondria or depression. Again, looking at all this years later, I think that those, he helped, you know, suffered from a lot more than hyper-conduroy. Others would say that maybe Kavorkin was right to help patients out when he did, but that his history of medical experiments made him a shady figure in their eyes. And there's definitely something to that argument. Page 214 of prescription, metaside, the goodness of plan death, Kavorkin wrote that assisting suffering or doomed persons to

kill themselves was merely the first step, an early distasteful professional obligation. What I find most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first unpleasant step can help establish in a world obituary. That last word was a word a term of his own coinage used to describe the pseudo-profession of medical death delivery. So he can come across a little bit as a Nazi doctor, a medical experimenter in some of his writings, which you know, obviously is off-putting. Dr. Kavorkin was kind of obsessed with death and most people seem to find that obsession pretty fucking morbid

Makes him uncomfortable Jack made a whole nation uncomfortable For years Kavorkin experimented things that other doctors wouldn't touch like blood transfusions from corpses I did not know that before this week Proposing things like doing live dissections on convicted criminals so they could be used to benefit society In a journal article the last fearsome taboo medical aspects of plan death Kavorkin also detailed a nest-assizing Experimenting on and utilizing the organs of a disabled newborn as a token of quote daring and highly imaginative research That would be possible beyond the constraints of traditional but outmoded hopelessly inadequate and essentially irrelevant

Ethical codes now sustained for the most part by vacuous sentimental reverence. And writing things like that, you know, fucking terrified people. Probably, rightfully so. I mean, dude, dude was definitely a member of the fuck your feelings, crowd. Coldly logical, not an emotional nurturer,

bit of a mad scientist. I think more than anything else, what made some of you uncomfortable when it came to Jack was his ability to casually talk about and scientifically explore something that terrifies most of us, our own inevitable death. So how are we going to tackle this very complicated subject today? First, we'll take a look at death and suicide throughout the ages, what meat sacks have thought at various times and places about the best ways to deal with death and what death

means, or some wacky shit. We're gonna dig into there. It's fun I'm gonna take a closer look at assisted suicide the history of various pro and against movements and then run down the arguments for both sides of the coin Finally before we recap will of course get into the life and work of jack of working in an experiment field There's some weird experiments blood soaked-soaked, time-soaked timeline. So let us begin. Today's topic takes us straight into the heart of something we don't often want to talk about. Want to think about death.

We spend a lot of our lives either ignoring the knowledge that death is one day coming for us, right, don't we? It's an incredibly upsetting topic. For, I would say, the overwhelming majority of people in the culture I'm a part of at least. American society considered by many academics to firmly be a death denying culture. In general, we don't like to think about it. Talk about it.

We don't like to acknowledge death as an inevitable reality. Well, logically, we understand that we will die someday. It is generally a topic that is too uncomfortable to discuss or really even dwell on for too long. And we sweep it under the rug. With death, you know, when death does approach or arrive, it is inevitably must Americans often use euphemisms, cute little phrases that make it sound you know, less, less final. Past on, passed away, even past, you know, just in current use. People don't really die, they expire or kick the bucket. They go to their reward, breathe their last, cash in their chips, meet their maker, depart this life, give up the ghost.

In all those other terms we use as avoidances. Insurance companies advertise plans designed to meet your final expenses. Once death arrives, its victims are not dead. No, not really. They're loved ones. They're departed. The deceased, the late so-and-so British historian Arnold Toin B even once remarked the death was un-American America is a youth culture that emphasizes beauty, virility, ambition, athletic prowess the old and the sick those closer to death

Historically been cast aside to the shadows go hide somewhere Ugh Watching you die reminds me that I will die and that doesn't make me feel good at all So please spare me uncomfortable feelings. Let me make your death about me. Do me a favor. Don't cry or mount too much. It's upsetting.

Please make it quick for the good of the rest of us. It's almost as if within this culture age and decline death are things that happen to other people as well. Preferably in other countries, not here. Not in the US. Come on, we're so alive. We're so we're strong. We're gonna live forever. Right? We're gonna figure out a conqueror death before we have to face it. If death feels close, we're just gonna drink more fucking whipple!

Fuck the grim reaper addition. Woo! Death isn't real. It's something, you know, we just see on television. It's it's Hollywood. Showbiz. We rarely stare in the face. We like to keep death at a distance. Once someone does die, they're a pretty specific standard associated with how we deal with death, and it's very detached now, much more than it used to be with human civilization, you know, from the funeral parlor process to the ritual of burying our dead, to how we deal with matters of inheritance, property left behind, or technology, advances in care, right? It worked very hard in recent years to make death so much more remote than it used to be

While you probably would have seen a dead body several even as a young person 1800s America Many no longer confront the reality of death if they're lucky until their grandparents or parents died and People don't die at home as often as they used to right instead they die in nursing homes hospitals Hospices where every effort is made to make death seem peaceful and final and not in your house, not in my neighborhood. I've personally never been to an open casket funeral ever. Never been to a morgue, never come across a dead body one time. I've driven past some traffic accidents,

so I guess, okay, maybe I have from a distance, specifically some motorcycle accidents where I assumed the still body on the highway on front of the first responders was no longer alive. But that's the closest I've ever come. I've watched some horrible VHS faces of death tapes when I was a kid, but never literally stared death in the face. Add into the cultural mix of how someone should die, given the technology available to

them in this day and age, say, prolonging life as long as possible, and the chance of some miracle cure comes out to save your loved one. And you get a pretty death adverse culture here. We don't want to give up. We fight cancer, right? To be a survivor, we beat death. We beat an illness. But we haven't always been this way.

Even though all societies throughout history have realized that death is the certain fate of human beings, different cultures have responded to it in very different ways. Through the ages, attitudes towards death and dying of change and continue to change, shaped by religious, intellectual, philosophical beliefs, Dr. Gavurakin would think that the best way to encounter death was to face it head on. By giving the individuals some autonomy in their death, not struggling as we often do to prolong life

at any cost no matter how poor the quality. For most of us I imagine, that's not how we see it. We always wanna know if there's one more treatment, one more intervention, one more surgery. We just don't want to let go. Sometimes even if it prolongs our suffering, or our loved one suffering, I've maybe had different role models

in this regard than some. My family, at least on my mom's side, kind of death and bracing in a weird way. My great grandma still was 95. I remember telling her how great would be to soon be celebrating her 100th birthday. And she did not share my enthusiasm at all. She said something to the effect of,

I hope not, my husband has gone, all my friends are gone. I wake up every morning thinking, why am I still here? I'm ready to go. Like she was very like, what, no. I'm not fucking happy to be alive anymore. Pretty morbid in the sense, but so honest, she passed. She died some time the next year.

Well, you know, actually my brother-in-law, Jared, he killed her. I think I can't prove it. He didn't kill her, but saying that he did was maybe the most poorly received inside my family joke I've ever done. He was with her when she died, when she fell in broker-hip and had to be taken to the hospital where she then died. And I may have jokingly in front of myip and had to be taken to the hospital where she then died. And I may have jokingly in front of my family asked him to please not kill any more of

my grandparents. And then my sister may have taken me aside and told me that he felt really, really back. And that when I say things like that, it's super fucked up and please don't do it again. Grandma's still a son-in-law, a pop-a-ward who passed away at the end of 2020. He was healthy for 87 of his 88 years. And then after doctors told him, there was nothing more that could be done to make him feel better, no surgery, no treatments.

His legs got real weak last few months of his life. He just couldn't walk very far at all, which is very tough for a guy who'd been so independent. He'd been fixing his roof, still getting his own fire with just a year or two before. And he told me straight up, this is no way to live. He did not want to drag on like that. He wanted to go at that point and I respected that, you know, hard to hear but respected it.

Why long to hang on and just suffer? And when he did die, yeah, I was fucking sad, but I was happy for him as well. I would have hated to see him hang on for another year or two in misery, a shell of his former self. I would have hated it because he would have hated it. It would have felt selfish to watch him hang around in pain like that, to watch his pride, take a needless beating, just so we wouldn't have to deal with our feelings of missing him. Personally when I go, God I hope it's fucking quick. But statistically it probably won't be, right?

Death isn't as sudden or as peaceful for the majority of Americans as we might think. Sorry to be the bear of some doom and gloom here. If you get to said, just remind yourself, din is a liar! Death is nothing but an illusion, the magic of Hollywood, come on. According to Stanford School of Medicine, about two million Americans will die this year,

and less than 10% of the population will experience a sudden or relatively rapid death due to cardiac diseases, trauma, etc. Most will be diagnosed and live an endure line for the chronic illness for a prolonged period of time before transitioning into death. Most patients diagnosed with a terminal illness live with the implications and endure the associated symptoms for months, if not years before dying. These might be physical symptoms, pain, dyspnea, they get a

labored breathing, nausea, vomiting, parietas, anorexia, fatigue, constipation, immobility, or psychological symptoms like depression, anxiety, panic, or even post-traumatic stress. Any given year, a lot of Americans deal with terminal illnesses. In 2020, an estimated 1,806,590 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in the US alone. An estimated 606,520 people died from the disease. The rate of new cases of cancer based on 2013 through 2017 cases, 442.4 per 100,000 men and women per year. Estimated national expenditures for cancer care in the US in 2018 were 150.8 billion. In future years, costs are likely to increase as the population ages and more people could

cancer. Costs are also likely to increase as new, often more expensive treatments are adopted as standards of care. How much of that money is extending the lives of people who are miserable and who have no chance of getting better. There are, of course, other terminal illnesses in 2020. As many as 5.8 million Americans were living with Alzheimer's disease. Younger people make it Alzheimer's, but it's very rare. The number of people living with a disease doubles every five years beyond the age of 65. This number projected to triple to 14 million people by 2060. One more two common diseases talk about ALS, amaya, amaya trophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Garry's

disease, named after that Yankee baseball legend. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leaving a person progressively more and more paralyzed. It's brutal. There's currently no cure. Once ALS starts, it almost always progresses, eventually taking away the ability to walk, dress, right, speak, swallow, breathe, greatly shortening the lifespan. Most people who develop ALS are between the ages of 40 and 70, with an average age of 55 at the time of diagnosis.

However, cases of the disease do occur in persons in their 20s and 30s. I'll be talking about one of those in a second. Only half of all people affected with ALS will live at least three or more years after diagnosis. 20% live five years or more, up to 10% will live more than 10 years. I once went to a wedding about 20 years ago in Spokane, Washington, and also at the wedding was Steve Gleason They might be familiar to you same ages me within a few months

Groping Spokane where I was living at the time Then he went to play football for the Northern Saints which he was doing when I saw him Special team star made a legendary blocked punt play for the Saints in their first home game After Hurricane Katrina there's a statue outside the stadium about it now when he was in high school He was a starline backer incredible power hitter for the baseball team. I didn't write this in my notes, but I think it was Gonzaga Prep. A dude was a hell of an athlete. He was jacked when I saw him in sports where his life couldn't have looked healthier,

couldn't have looked more alive. But then after a long period of declining health, he was diagnosed with ALS in 2011 when he was just 33. He was given no more than five years to live. Well, he's still alive, 10 years out. And he seems based on his Instagram post to be very fulfilled. But ALS has robbed him of, and I'm not positive of the order of how all of this was robbed from him. His ability to walk, to talk, to move his arms, to move his hands, to eat, to even breathe on his own. He now is in a highly specialized motorized wheelchair. He is able to type and also to move his wheelchair by eye movement alone.

You can still here, you can still see, he can stare at different points on the specialized tablet attached to his wheelchair facing him, and that allows him, based on just pupil position, to move his wheelchair and you can use the same ability to type. It's fucking wild. It's incredible what Steve's doing. He's an inspirational, you know, but would you want to live like that with the ability to only control the movement of your eyes? Would you want to have to live like that?

Right? If he wanted to die, he would have to have someone help him die. He would not be able to do it on his own. And if you wanted to die, would you want society to label you a quitter to refuse you that right? Right? You're someone who's given up because they're weak. Should everyone be expected to persevere in the face of almost unimaginable adversity like Steve Gleason, or should you be given the freedom to say no thank you? I've enjoyed my time here. This is not for me. I would rather not, I would like to leave now. Goodbye everyone. It's interesting to think about, right?

We've talked about so much death in the history of this podcast, genocide, serial killings, but we've never really addressed it head on, have we? And doing so, I gotta say, it feels so much fucking sadder than all the deaths we have talked about here before. I like everyone listening, you know, in a product of the culture that I happen to be born into. An American death culture ignoring the prevalence of terminal illnesses and an almost

pathological denial of impending death has left me like I imagine many of you with a very strong aversion to want to discuss any of this is very uncomfortable. But Kavorkin, another American did not share this aversion at all. Dr. K was influenced largely by his parents' experience of death back in Armenia by tales of the genocide, and also through his own academic studies, where he'd be influenced by the death culture of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans.

So let's look into this history now of how we humans have dealt with morality across the world, see where he got some of his, you know, perspective. According to archaeological records, we know that around 2.5 to 3 million years ago, humans began to bury their dead. At some point before that, I guess where you fell was, you know, where you laid to rot. And then I imagine you're at least dragged away from wherever your fellow tribe members ate and slept, and then at some point you were buried.

Paleolithic corpses accompanied by stone tools and parts of animals were laid in holes in the ground, sometimes given, quote, extra protection. Those sources have not indicated that we found what that means. I'm sure buried. Sacrifices, the presentation of offerings to higher beans or to the dead, appear as early as the middle Paleolithic period, which lasted from 250,000 to 30,000 years ago. Pits with some animal bones have been found in the vicinity of burial sites, leading archaeologists to think that ancient humans were making sacrifices to the dead.

According to this, or excuse me, around the 7th millennium BCE, so 9,000 years ago, people were practicing ancestor worship according to evidence discovered at Jericho in Palestine. Archaeologists found several skulls in a separate room, some of them covered with a plaster modeling of faces. They believed these skulls were connected to the veneration of ancestors, which in many skull cults were associated with bringing increased fertility to land. As human civilization began to develop, early humans began to think about what if anything

lives on after death, what many would call the soul. And religion was born in part as a means to answer that question. Ancient Hebrews who lived from, you know, 1020 to 86 BCE while acknowledging the existence of the soul were not preoccupied with the afterlife. They thought it was pretty much dust unto dust. You're here and then you're not. By contrast, early Egyptians who lived from 2950 to 950 BCE thought that the preservation of the dead body mummification guaranteed a happy afterlife, very much believed in the

afterlife. They believed a person had a dual soul, the Ka, the Ba. The Ka was the spirit that dwelled near the body, whereas the Ba was the vitalizing soul that lived on in the realm of the dead. The ancient Samarins, whose religion extended even earlier than the Egyptians, also believed in some form of an afterlife, where we lived as a shadowy imitation of our life on this realm. The ancient Chinese, at least as early as 2500 BC, also believed in a soul, one part of which continued to exist after the death of the body. That part, you know,

continued to exist, was worshipped by body. That part continued to exist, was worshipped by its descendants. And all this belief in the afterlife, it affected how these cultures cared for their dead. The ancient Greeks believed that the gods would punish them if they didn't bury their dead properly. And even though reincarnation is usually associated with Asian religions, some Greeks were followers of Orphism, a religion that taught the soul underwent many reincarnations until purification was achieved. But the vast majority of Greeks believed that after death, the psych, a person's vital essence, psychy, lived on in the underworld. Greek writers like Homer populated their stories with travels to the underworld and expressed

to belief in eternal judgment and retribution after death. This period also saw the rise of Greek philosophers, who were also concerned what you should do when death was on the horizon, including what suicide meant. In general, the pagan world, both Roman and Greek, had a pretty relaxed attitude towards the concept of suicide. One early Greek historical person to commit suicide was EMPA, EMPA to Cleats, around 434 BCE. One of his beliefs was that death was a transformation.

It is possible this idea influenced the suicide. Empatocles died according to his ancient writings by throwing himself into the Sicilian volcano Mount Etna. And that is fucking dramatic. I hope his transformation worked out for him. At the very least, he transformed from an able-bodied dude into a pile of deadbusts up meat at the bottom of that volcano pit Other philosophers did not take it quite that far the Greek philosopher Pythagoras opposed euthanasia because it might disturb the soul's journey towards

Final purification is planned by the gods on the contrary Socrates and Plato believed people should you know could should choose to end their life if they were no longer useful to themselves to the state Socrates even put his money where his mouth was choosing to drink hemlock, rather than be executed by the state for his unconventional teachings. Great example of a right to die choice. Knowing that a painful and humiliating public death was very likely in his future, he chose to leave privately and peacefully. Like Socrates in Plato, the classical Romans believed a person suffering from intolerable pain or an incurable illness should have the right

to choose a good death. They considered Eurasia a mode of dying that allowed a person's right to take control of an intolerable situation and distinguish it from suicide and act considered to be a shirking of one's responsibilities to one's family and to humankind. Ancient Greeks, man, so smart in so many ways.

Planting those seeds for Western civilization to grow so long ago. And Rome's suicide was never a general offense of the law. The whole approach to the question was essentially pragmatic. It was specifically forbidden in three cases. Those accused of capital crimes, don't kill yourselves, we're supposed to kill you. Soldiers, you go down in got you go down the battlefield,

you know, not by your own hand and slaves. Don't, you know, go ruin in somebody's property. The reason behind all these three was the same. It was uneconomic for these people to die. Right? If the accused killed themselves prior to trial and conviction, then the state lost the right to seize the property. A loophole that was only closed by emperor, emperor dementia. Oh my gosh, these fucking Romanians always had. Dimension, Emperor Dimension. In the first century CE, who decreed that those who died prior to trial were without legal errors.

So, you know, pretty fucked up, kill yourself before we kill you, and you don't get to pass on your property to your family. The suicide of a soldier was treated on the same basis as desertion, and if a slave killed himself or herself within six months of purchase, the master could claim a full refund from the former owner. treated on the same basis as desertion, and if a slave killed himself or herself within six months of purchase, the master could claim a full refund from the former owner. Okay, but in general, outside of those three situations,

suicide, not a big deal to the Romans. Socrates, Plato, Romans would be big influences on Dr. K. Not sure the following death cultures also influence him, but worth taking a look at to gain more perspective on how we humans have historically looked at death on the right to die. Some Mongolian and Tibetan cultures practice and some still practice, Sky burial, the process of placing the body of the deceased on a high, unprotected place to be consumed by wildlife and the elements to return to nature. This is part of the Vajraana Buddhist belief,

of trans-migration of spirits which teaches respect in the body after death is needless. It is now just an empty vessel. During the European Middle Ages, death with its accompanying agonies, except that as a destiny everyone shared, and dealing with it happened as a community. Death became a public ritual and involved specific preparations, the presence of family, friends, and neighbors, as well as music, food, drinks, and games. Social aspect of these customs kept death public and tame through the enactment of familiar ceremonies that comforted more comforted, mourners. While some early rituals, death rituals were similar to the funeral rights we still employ today. Other rituals were weird as fuck. In some parts of Europe, human skulls were soaked in alcohol to create a tincture called the King's Drops. It was said to be good for gout, dropsy, aka edema, swelding cause by fluid in your body's tissues, and all fevers, putrid or pestilential

among other ailments. King Charles II in England allegedly paid 6,000 pounds for a personal recipe in the 17th century. What? Imagine doing that today. Just damn, looks like you got to gout. I don't worry though. I got just a thing for that. My grandpa passed, we boiled the flesh off his head and then soaked his skull in alcohol

and made ourselves no potion. Here, take a few tablespoons, grandpa's skull juice. They'll be feeling better in no time. Some people also used to believe that the blood of the freshly executed was a health tonic. And they would pay executioners a few coins to drink it warm from the gallows. Oh, yum, yum. Oh, drink up. Doing this documented in Germany, Sweden, and Denmark is recently as the 19th century in a few cases. They were all kinds of superstitious beliefs about the magical power of corpses in Europe. People thought being touched by the hand of a newly dead man could cure ailments just

before the corpse of James Morgan was cut down and a hanging in the city of Madestone England in 1819. The hangman enabled a young woman to stand on the waiting coffin in order to be able to reach up and have the hand of the hanging corpse pass over a swelling on her throat. Fuck's sake. Oh, me, oh, me throat feels bitter already, Dez. A dead man's hand. Nothing gets you sweating down like a dead man's hand.

That's what that long ago. Many places in England in the 16th, 17th, 18th, early 19th centuries, the hangman would take the hand of the corpse and administer rubbings. Do patients who sometimes stood in line for that shit at the scaffold. It's happening now that the condemned were aware that their bodies might be exploited minutes after death and some would ask their executioners to not allow it. An 1815 along the scaffold of Newgate Prison in London waiting his hanging, John Binstead

found guilty of forgery requested of the presiding clergyman that his hands would not be made available. To those seeking a cure for when's, AKA cysts. How the fuck did they come up with that? Who thought of that? Some dipshit, British healer, some witch doctor, fucking shaman, something, I don't know. Made up some bullshit, just caught on, I guess.

Your fight, Dr. Tallywak. Look at me, Nick Lumps. Sorry, my lady, but as I told you, I need the proper medicine. I have not the proper potions to cure your necklumps, but I could easily cure them if I had the own hand of a corpse. All right, we'll see if that works. We'll see if you're worth my me uncle passed no more than three moons back. I'll dig him up. I'll get you the hand.

No, the hand must be Fresher fresher than the fresh hand over dead man is the only one that works All right, then there's an execution tomorrow. I'll get to that hand And maybe the doctor was like how fuck she can be pissed when this bullshit doesn't work But then it did work through some crazy coincidence, right? And she told everyone. Oh, you can get rid of your neck clumps, look at his split. You just need to fresh dead man's hand to rub on your neck. So insane, some of these things. While some superstitions likely pagan origin,

like the hands that I just talked about, subter the cracks, in general the Roman Catholic church, with his emphasis on eternal life of the soul in heaven or hell, held great power over medieval European notions of death and funeral rights, et cetera. It's extended to control over the concept of suicide as well.

The church would ec-communicate people who attempted suicide. And those who died by suicide were even buried outside of consecrated graveyards. That's not how crazy that is. The burial banishment also incorporated into a lot of Protestant churches, belief systems. A lot of old cemeteries in the US,

especially on the East Coast, most of the East Coast, still have gravestones lying just outside the borders of the church's original graveyard boundaries. That'll teach people, you wanna be buried next to Mon Pa? Well, then you have to follow our death rules. We're not just gonna punish you in this life, we're gonna punish you when you're dead too. And the dead were punished, often,

sometime in Medieval Europe, a criminal ordinance, this is so ridiculous, issued by King Louis XIV to France in 1670. So, severely punished corpses. The dead person's body was drawn. The community was inside the dead person's body was drawn through the streets, face down, then hung or thrown on a fucking garbage heap. And all the person's property was confiscated. Jesus Christ. There's so much madness in our species. The leader of

France demanded that. They think that life is so hot in France. They should just kill themselves, huh? Not without punishment from me. Tells my king don't anyone who kills themselves will be killed again by me. I will have their dead body drags to the streets until they are more dead. I was on hangs and so the middle trash on the icon kills the French people. Fucking maniacal. The leaders doing that from the 14th to the 16th centuries, Europe experienced new directions and economics, the arts, social scientific and political thought, but that's still mostly regarded in superstitious or religious terms.

Over thoughts on suicide, at least by some, we're being discussed in new ways. This is good. Thomas Moore, the English humanist, wrote in 1616 that a person afflicted with disease can quote, free himself from this bitter life. Since my death, he will put an end, not to enjoyment, but to torture. It will be a pious and holy action. English poet philosopher John Dunn's work, Baya Thena. Oh my gosh. Baya Thatanatos. Fuck this guy. Greek for life and death was published in 1608, contained one of the first modern defenses of suicide, proving that some suicides

could be good because, according to his interpretations, some people in the Bible had essentially committed suicide, such as Jesus, Samson, Saul, a little controversial. But for society overall, suicides still not considered a good thing to do, especially for religious reasons. Those some people tried to find a way around it in the late 17th, early 18th centuries, Lou Polls were invented to avoid the damn nation that was promised by most Christian doctrine as a penalty of suicide. One famous and horrific example of someone who wished to end their life, but avoid the eternity of being sent to hell, burning in hell.

Christina Yohan Stata died in 1740. She was a Swedish murderer, hangi bangi, who killed a child in Stockholm with the sole purpose of being executed? Seriously, she cut a kid's fucking head off with an axe, so she wouldn't go to hell. Why? Well most of you guys, she was seriously mentally ill. She was clearly depressed, had isolated herself from society for quite some time before this.

The love of her life, her fiancee had died. She lost all will to live, wanted to follow him to the grave, but because she'd been taught that people who complete suicide go to hell She thought her fiance was definitely heaven. So that's not an option. She's not gonna go to hell So she decided okay, I get his kill a kid and then beg for God's forgiveness before being executed and that gets me into heaven Many of death row inmate I have focused on the same loophole how fucking idiotic and totally fucked She is an example of those who seek suicide to execution by committing a murder,

like a similar to suicide by cop. By the late 18th century, there was more of a shit from a religious to a more scientific exploration of death and suicide in the Western world, based largely in the rational thought of the enlightenment. David Hume denied that suicide was a crime as it affected no one and was potentially to the advantage of the individual. In his 1777 essays on suicide

and the immortality of the soul, he rhetorically asked, why should I prolong a miserable existence? Because of some frivolous advantage, which the public may perhaps receive from me, despite more openness to dying before your time, so to speak, death itself was still scary. And new medical knowledge only meant more of an obsession for those who wanted to figure out how and why death happened. In 18th century Europeans, with new technical knowledge, sometimes built coffins with contraptions to enable any prematurely buried person to survive and communicate from the grave.

What if they wake up? Despite new scientific knowledge, there were still a lot of superstition. In 19th century Europe and America, the dead were carried out of the house Feed first. I love this in order to prevent the spirit from looking back into the house and Beckoning another member of the family to follow them or Also, so they couldn't see where they were going and that way they wouldn't be able to find the house again I love just the lack of logic and things like that. Like I love the belief that ghosts are real.

You know, I actually am someone who believes in ghosts, but holy shit, I guess in this situation, they're so fucking dumb, right? Like yeah, they're real, but God, they're fucking stupid. They can't even figure out how to get back into their own house. If you just take out their dead body feet first, where is it? I didn't look

as I left. Mirrors also covered so the soul would not get trapped and be left unable to pass to their side. Fucking stupid goes, getting trapped in mirrors. Family photographs also sometimes turn face down to prevent any of the close relatives and friends of the deceased from being possessed by the spirit of the dead. Also very creepy. Victorians often took photos of dead loved ones as part of their grieving process. These post mortem photographs became keepsakes that were displayed in homes, sent to friends and relatives,

worn inside lockets, sweet Jesus. I wonder if anyone ever had some dark humor fun with that. I don't think so, but like, like, did anyone ever put anything inside the corpse's mouth to prop it up into some kind of like super creepy, like just way too big dead smile? And if they did do that, then they also just maybe like glue the eyelids open,

like really wide open. So it looked like they were like weirdly excited about their new situation. That's so funny to me. Some big frame photo in someone's living room, just dead dead with just a huge manic smile, really wide open eyes, like he just heard some great but shocking news.

What? I'm fucking dead? Oh, that's wonderful news. Also, at this time, family members would typically prepare the corpse for viewing in the home, not in a funeral parlor. That practice would change during the late 19th century. Thank God, when professional undertakers took over the job

of preparing and burying the debt. They provided services such as rating the corpse for viewing and burial, building the coffin, digging the grave, directing the funeral procession. Professional and bombing, cosmetic restoration of bodies became widely available, right? Make them look alive. It's too sad if they looked dead.

All carried out in a funeral parlor where bodies were then viewed instead of in the home. And so we know we really began to distance ourselves from death now. Two sad if I looked at, all carried out in a funeral parlor where bodies were then viewed instead of in the home. And so we know we really began to distance ourselves from death now. Cemetery's changed too to do that. Before the early 19th century, American Cemetery's were typically unsanitary, overcrowded, weed-filled places that smelled strongly of decay. That began to change in 1831 when the Massachusetts Horticultural Society purchased 72 acres of fields,

ponds, trees, and gardens in Cambridge and built Mount Auburn Cemetery. The cemetery was to become a model for the landscape garden cemetery in the U.S. that we typically see today. Cemetery is, you know, where tranquil places where those grieving can visit the graves of loved ones and find comfort in the beautiful surroundings. Look at the pretty flowers. Don't think about Nana. You know, they wouldn't have to smell Nana rotting.

I can't even imagine going to a fucking nasty cemetery. We just smelled decay. Then with mass printing, getting cheaper and becoming more and more common in the 19th century, instructions for how to mourn the dead started to be published. So called morning manuals became available after 1830, which comforted the grieving with the concept of the deceased were released from worldly cares in heaven and that they would be reunited there with other deceased loved ones. Also in the 19th century, so weird death influenced fashion. The deadly lung disease tuberculosis, called consumption at the time, was pervasive during the 19th century in Europe and the US as we've discussed in previous episodes. You know, consumption cost

suffers to develop a certain appearance and extreme paler thinness, which to look often described as haunted, that then became fashionable, represented in poetry and literature as a sort of archetype. By the mid-19th century, the romanticizing of death took on a new twist in the US. Spiritualism in which the living communicate directly with the dead began in 1848 in the US with the Fox sisters Margaret and Catherine,

who lived in Hyde'sville, New York. We've talked about the Fox sisters a couple of times before and time so. The sisters claimed to have communicate with the spirit of a man murdered by a former tenant in their house, the story spread like wildfire, and the practice of conducting sittings to contact the dead gained instant popularity. Mediums, including the newly popular Fox sisters were supposedly sensitive to vibrations from the disembodied souls that temporarily lived in the part of the spirit world just outside the Earth's limits.

This belief in practice continued to spread during the Civil War. Virtually everyone had lost a son, husband or other loved one during that war. Some survivors wanted assurances that their loved ones were okay. Others were simply curious about life after death. Many of those who had drifted away from traditional Christianity embraced this new spiritualism, which claimed that there was scientific proof of survival after physical death. It makes it feel better about death. Now attitudes about suicide are changing once again.

By 1879, English law began to distinguish between suicide and homicide, although suicide still resulted in forfeiture of a state, which is crazy to me. It took until the mid-20th century for suicide to become legal in much of the Western world. The 20th century would see a turn to a more medicalized approach to death. The modern hospice movement was founded by Dame Sicily Saunders in England in 1967. That's so recent. Then later moved to Canada and the US. The hospice movement sometimes called palliative care, emphasize a soothing, calming environment

where patients can visit with family members and get pain relief. Around that time, the works of the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler Ross, including her 1969 book on Death and Dine began to introduce a more holistic approach to death to Americans, and emphasize confronting the reality of death and restoring dignity to the Dine. We will talk more about Kub Cuba Ross later this episode, holy shit, we ever. Her story takes a very odd twist, and there's an interesting connection between her and Dr. Koworkin.

But first, wrapping up the section, these days, hospice can refer to a place a freestanding facility or designated floor in a hospital or nursing home, or to a program like hospice home care, in which the team of healthcare professionals helps the dying patient and family at home, which is very nice. Hospice teams may involve physicians, nurses, social workers, pastoral counselors, trained

volunteers, what a wonderful group of people, such a noble profession, noble field to work in. Hospice facilities served 621,100 people in 2000 of these 85.5% died while in hospice care. 2000 of these 85.5% died while in hospice care nearly 80% of hospice patients were 65 years or older 26.5% 85 years or older even though more than half 57.5% of those admitted to hospice care in 2000 cancer is a primary diagnosis patients with other primary diagnosis such as Alzheimer's disease and heart respiratory and kidney diseases also served by hospice. But importantly, hospice workers don't intend to kill you.

Hospice is for when you're already about to die naturally, months, weeks, or days out. If you have a terminal diagnosis, but you're not about to die soon naturally, but want to die before nature finally runs its course, well, that's, that's very different. Sometimes those with terminal diagnosis, uh, or diagnosis, uh, now that we're discaved, seek out the plural of, of with terminal diagnosis or diagnoses, now that word escapes, seek out the plural of diagnoses, I think is the, anyway, they seek out doctors of physicians to help them die on their own timetable and not endure the ravages of their illness,

hence physician assisted suicide, which is, you know, Dr. Gourkin's life work. So what exactly is physician assisted suicide? Important to fully understand this, since this is what made Kvorkin infamous. Initially, physician-assisted suicide specifically referred to the late 19th century Romanian practice of hiring your local doctor to literally beat you to death. You would sign a waiver, agree to have your arm tied behind your back, your doctor would put on a pair of brass knuckles, and punch you in the fucking face and head until you were dead. Sometimes for

quite a while after that, depending on their level of anger, you use this was done in a barn or in a clearing down the woods. And of course, that's crazy. I'm not even sure what my brain ever put that scenario together. Basically, a physician-assisted suicide is having a physician help end someone's life through administering medication or providing the medication that would kill them Sometimes also called euthanasia According to Gallup polls the percentage of people in the US who support euthanasia has risen from 36% in 1950 Up to 65% in 1991 to hide 75% in 1996 Then went back down to 69% in 2014. And I would guess based on my own perception

of current cultural trends that support for it is even lower now. Intriguingly, terminology appears to play a role in people's perceptions. 69% in 2014 favored a law that allowed doctors to legally end a patient's life by some painless means. But the number of dip to 58% when respondents were asked whether physicians should be allowed to assist the patient to commit suicide. Man, words so important, you just write words to sell your message. Even if two messages could mean completely the same thing, but one word differently, so much more effective. Now the pill goes down so much easier. While the 2014 MedScape Ethics Report, a survey of 17,000 U.S. doctors found

that 54% of doctors surveyed think physician-assisted suicide should be permitted, up 8 percentage points from 2010. I thought the number would be even higher since doctors see so many, you know, more people's final days than most of us and see a lot more agony. Back in the 90s when support amongst the public and from doctors was even less, youth inia would get doctor K and a lot of trouble with the law When he was promoting it Michigan wasn't clear whether or not it was legal these days the Michigan Euthanasia law is now limited to the designation of a patient advocate who in accordance with the will May request that the patient be removed from artificial life support. That's all no actual Euthanasia allowed. No physician

assisted suicide is allowed. Bands on that go back almost 200 years in the US. In 1828, New York outlawed assisted suicide thanks to the political power of religious voters and politicians with many states and territories following. Between 1857 and 1865, a New York commission led by Dudley Field drafted a criminal code that prohibited 18A suicide and specifically furnishing another person with any deadly weapon or poisonous drug knowing that such person intends to use such weapon or drug and taking his own life. California codified its assisted suicide prohibition in 1874. In 1885, the American Medical Association opposed physician assisted suicide, saying it is an attempt to make the physician don the robes of an executioner. A little dramatic,

but okay, 1905, 1906, a bill to legalize euthanasia was defeated in the Ohio legislature by a vote of 79 to 23. 1906, a similar initiative that would legalize euthanasia not only for terminal adults, but also for rough old-timey language incoming, hideously deformed or idiotic children. Jesus Christ. That was introduced and defeated as well. After 1906, the public interest in Euthanasia receded, but then came back with a bang in

1915. In the early hours of November 12, 1915, in Chicago's German-American hospital, Anna Bollinger gave birth to her fourth child, seven pound baby boy. Baby was blue, badly deformed. After conferring with the father, the doctor awakened Harry, Jay, Heiselden, the hospital's 45 year old chief of staff. Heiselden diagnosed the baby with a laundry list of physical defects and predicted that the child would die shortly if the child didn't receive surgery.

In a decision whose shock waves would ripple from coast to coast and mark a milestone in the history of euthanasia in America, Heiselden advised against this surgery. He said it would be very painful, chances of the child surviving would be small, and even if the child did survive, ongoing severe medical complications and pain were a certainty. The volunteers tearfully agreed, and on November 16th, Heislandon called a news conference to announce that, rather than operate, he would merely stand by passively and let nature complete its bungled job. Child died the next day, amid growing controversy.

Heislandon got more Americans than ever before, talking about euthanasia. The publicity surrounding his professional conduct inspired other Americans to speak out in favor of letting more old-time, very callous language coming, severely deformed infants die for the good of society. Jesus Christ. I didn't fucking, in cushioned the blow with the language there. Heidelton demonstrated how support for euthanasia could be nurtured by a

cultural climate, punctuated by science, naturalism, and humanitarian reform. But I can also see by many people would have a problem with what he did. It's one thing to euthanize a person with a terminal illness who may have had a chance to live life on their own terms, but, you know, baby, that's not as clear. Right? Who should get to the sign? Whose life is worth living? After subsiding again in the 1920s, the debate about so-called mercy killing caught fire

again in the 1930s, making these years a pivotal juncture in the history of euthanasia in America. When the coming to depression and more troubled economic times or with it, Americans began talking about suicide and controlled dying. Public opinion polls indicated in 1937 that fully 45% of Americans had caught up with Harry Heiselden's belief that the mercy killing of quote, infants born permanently deformed or mentally handicapped should be permissible again, again. I know that's not in line with today's ethics. 1935, the voluntary Euthanasia legislation society

was founded in England by C. Killick Millard, retired public health physician. But then the very next year, a bill to legalize Euthanasia was defeated in the British House of Lords. A similar organization, the Euthanasia Society of America, founded in the very next year, a bill to legalize euthanasia was defeated in the British House of Lords. A similar organization the Euthanasia Society of America founded in the US in 1938. And then World War II would come along

and a tiny, mustache-showed maniac would put quite a stain on the concept of euthanasia. As Hitler's war machine marched eastward across Europe, news of Nazi atrocities against mental patients and handicapped children, filtered back to America, and Americans now associated all human euthanasia with the evils of the Holocaust quickly turn their backs on euthanasia of any kind.

1950 the World Medical Association votes to recommend to all national medical associations that euthanasia be condemned under any circumstances. That same year the American Medical Association issued a statement that the majority of doctors do not believe in euthanasia But then just two years later 1952 the British and American euthanasia societies submit a petition to the United Nations Commission on human rights to amend the UN Declaration of Human Rights to include quote The right of incurable suffers to euthanasia or merciful death in as much as this right is then not only or merciful death. In as much as this right is, then, not only consent with the rights and freedoms set forth

in the Declaration of Human Rights, but essential to their realization, we hereby petition the United Nations to proclaim the right of incurable sufferers to euthanasia. It's back and forth. Pro and Con. We'll continue for a while into the 1970s. When though many are still opposed to euthanasia, patient autonomy is a concept now starts to gain more traction. Patient autonomy, especially emphasizes the right to refuse medical care,

even life sustaining care. And by 1977, eight states, California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, North Carolina, and Texas had signed various right to die bills into law. Some are no longer on the books, but can Idaho, but they were for a while. Why so much back and forth in this issue? So much controversy. On a very basic level, physician-assisted suicide goes against the hypocritic oath. The vow doctors take to do no harm to their patients and try to heal them. But what if the more humane thing is not to make someone live out the life they don't want to live? What if that would be doing them harm? People who advocate for euthanasia say that the right to die should be a matter of personal choice. It's not about whether

or not you morally condone it. It's about not enforcing your morality on others in this area in a legal sense. We are able to choose all kinds of different things in life from who we marry, to what kind of work we do, and I think when it comes to the end of one's life, whether you have a terminal illness or whether you're just in pain for other reasons, you should have a legal choice about what happens to you. Very similar to the pro choice argument concerning abortion to me, not about condoning abortion, it's about not enforcing your morality

on the body of a stranger, it's about freedom. Very disappointed in a bill that just recently passed an Idaho that mirrors the one in Texas. Fucking hate it so much, Couldn't hate it more. Couldn't be more pro choice. The pro-Euthanated crowd also say that when healing is no longer possible, when death is imminent and patients find their suffering unbearable, then the physician's role should shift from healing to relieving suffering in accordance with the patient's wishes.

There are many diagnoses that lead to unbearable suffering. Everything from advanced cancer to dementia, to Parkinson's, to lung disease, to ALS, we talked about earlier. Maybe everyone shouldn't feel pressure to soldier on, no matter what, like Steve Gleason. Certain diseases like advanced forms of cancer, you have a ticking clock hanging above you. We just wait until you can no longer lead the life you live.

Others like ALS don't necessarily include death immediately, but they do take away life as you know it. You're trapped in your body and able to perform the basic tasks that signify your human autonomy, like dressing or feeding yourself. In those cases, advocates of euthanasia say, you should have a right to die to live and end your life on your terms. If you don't want to spend your final moments as a shadow of your former self in some ways, and that a doctor should be able to help you do this because it

would be humane. They point to countries who have instituted physician, assisted suicide, like the Netherlands. But doing it since the 1980s, the Rotterdam Court in 1991 established the guidelines for when euthanasia can take place, including that the patient must be experiencing unbearable pain, they must consent. There must be no other reasonable solutions to the problem, and that the patient must have been given alternatives to euthanasia and time to consider these alternatives among others. Since 1981, these guidelines have been interpreted by the Dutch courts and Royal Dutch Medical

Association in ever-broadening terms. One example is the interpretation of the unbearable pain requirement reflected in the Hague Court of Appeals 1986 decision. The court ruled that the pain guideline was not limited to physical pain, and that psychic suffering or the potential disfigurement of personality could also be grounds for euthanasia. That's a very interesting phrase, a disfigurement of personality. I actually really like that. All this makes me think about former suck subject, Robin Williams, right?

Completing suicide after privately struggling with a Louis body dementia, erasing his personality. He wanted to end it before he was no longer robin in any real way. And I can't blame him. Today, Euthanasia and the Netherlands is regulated by the termination of life on request and assistance to a side act, passed in 2001 to effect in 2002. Official data showed that the number of Euthanasia cases has risen more or less continuously since 2006, reaching 6361 in 2019. These cases, cases though they make up just a very small proportion of all deaths But they have doubled from just under 2% in 2002 to just over 4% in 2019

But again, keep in mind, you know that 4% many of those people were near death already Higher rates of euthanasia also associated with higher household income good self-reported mental and physical health This isn't you know mentally ill people making these decisions. Oftentimes, possibly because the well-off and the healthy may be more inclined to ask for assistance and dine when they do suffer, suggests researchers. Clearly, well, the numbers there are rising. They don't point to legalizing euthanasia as leading to people just off and themselves, left and right, all fucking willy-nilly.

Still, many Americans don't think that that is a good enough reason to legalize it here Opponents of euthanasia say that euthanasian patients with terminal illnesses would make other people with terminal illnesses feel like they quote deserve to die I strongly disagree Why does what is right for one have to be right for all why make it so personal people to this so much? Right, I've told dark stand-up bits on stage for years and countless times. I'll watch someone have a good time in the crowd. Oh, fun and jokes. But then one of the jokes happens to hit on something near and dear to their heart and

oh, now it's no longer a comedy show. Now it's personal. If you're listening and you're suffering from ALS, for example, to be clear, I'm not pressuring you to die. I just think that because of the severity of the condition, if you want to die before the disease, it takes away more your abilities, you just be allowed to of the severity of the condition, if you want to die before the disease, it takes away more your abilities, you just be allowed to end the pain if you want.

That's all. Very much in favor of personal choice. Not everyone's wired with the ability to withstand it and continue to find enough meaning to make life worthwhile. Ponents also think that seeing suicide as a solution for some illnesses will only undermine the willingness of doctors and society to learn how to show real compassion and address patients' pain and other problems. They say that in states that have legalized assisted suicide, in fact, most patients request

the lethal drugs not due to pain or even fear of future pain but due to concerns like loss of dignity and becoming a burden on others, attitudes that these laws encourage. And I say, so fucking what? Aren't those concerns representative of a different kind of pain? and becoming a burden on others. Attitudes that these laws encourage. And I say, so fucking what? Are those concerns representative of a different kind of pain? Rather than suicide, these opponents want to care for people in ways that assure them

that they have the dignity, they desire, and it is a privilege, not a burden to care for them as long as they live, but what if they don't agree? They also point to the idea that a physician assisted suicide would legal, insurers would encourage suicide now as a way to save money. Well, that's an entirely separate argument.

Allowing a patient to choose to die is one thing. Allowing an insurance company to refuse coverage to someone who won't die, that's very different. A lot of different laws would need to be passed. You know, it's a very different argument. I don't think legalizing euthanasia opens up a slippery slope, you know, argument concern, probably instilled in our culture about this topic

as a result of past eugenics movements with the Nazis, and that physician assistant suicide is just a hopskip to jump away from people being mandated to be killed. Whether that's true or not, these opponents do point out that the Dutch have a system though that they have one. It's not as cut and dry as you might think. Many Dutch euthanasia cases involve the end of life clinic and network of facilities, affiliated with the largest Dutch euthanasia advocacy organizations. These clinics routinely handle euthanasia requests refused by other doctors. And many doctors seem to refuse requests made by those suffering from psychiatric disorders, not physical ailments.

Psychiatric diagnosis, not based on an objective laboratory or imaging test, generally more subjective assessment based on standard criteria, agreed on by professionals in that field. Some doctors reach conclusions with which other doctors may reasonably disagree. For example, an otherwise healthy Dutch woman was euthanized 12 months after her husband's death for prolonged grief disorder.

A diagnosis listed in the international classification of diseases, but not in the DSM, in the Diagnostic and Societical Manual of Mental Disorders used by Psychiatrists and Psychologists around the world. So, I get that there's a problem with all this. You know, it gets a little looser with psychiatric illnesses. Dr. K would never euthanize anyone with a psychiatric disorder, according to him. But this example goes to show how murky all can be. Whatever

your opinion on this may be, you certainly can't expect all physicians to, you know, be down with helping someone take their life. That might just go against an individual's ethics, which I get. Now, the American Medical Association's present-day guidelines seem to toe the line between these two ways of thinking. According to them, this is what a physician should do when it comes to assisted suicide. They should thoughtfully consider whether or in how, significantly in action or declining to act will undermine the physician's personal integrity, right? Create emotional moral distress for the physician.

Compromise, their ability to provide care for other patients. Also before entering into a patient physician relationship, make clear any specific interventions or services the physician cannot in good conscious provide because they are contrary to the physicians deeply held personal beliefs. Makes sense. Three, take care that their actions do not discriminate against or unduly burden individual patients or populations of patients and do not adversely affect patient or public trust, fair. Four, be mindful of the burden their actions may place on fellow professionals. Five uphold standards of informed consent and informed the patient about all relevant

options for treatment. Right, including options to which the physician morally objects. Six in general physician should refuse a patient to a refer a patient, excuse me, to another physician or institution to provide treatment the physician declines to offer. Yes. Seven continue to provide other ongoing care for the patient or formally terminate the patient physician relationship and keeping with ethics guys. So fair, you know, you got to protect doctors and patients both.

These days, physician assistants who aside legal in 10 states and in a DC, it's an option given to individuals by law in Colorado. Like I said, DC Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, not okay. Not anymore. Of course not. So socially conservative here. Fuck Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. Not okay, not anymore, of course not. So socially conservative here, fuck me. Guys, be crazy. We'll probably be the last state to legalize weed.

Legalize the devil's lettuce. Good job, boys, you law makers, you fucking pieces of shit. Anyway, physician assistant suicide is an option given to individuals in Montana and California via court decision. Individuals must have a terminal illness as well as a prognosis of six months or less to live. The specific method in each state varies, but mainly involves a prescription from a licensed physician approved by the state in which the patient is resident.

Physician is assisted suicide, differs from euthanasia, which is defined as the active assisting people with their death in order to end their suffering, but without the back end of a controlled legal authority. In states where it's legal, physician, assistant to a side, not incredibly common. According to California's 2018 Department of Public Health and your report, 452 individuals receive prescriptions.

337 people died after ingestion of dispensed medication between January 1st, December 31st, 2018. For a state with tens of millions of people, that's not a lot. This was made legal from a 2015 law signed by governor Jerry Brown. Yes. Colorado's Department of Public Health and Environment reported that in 2020, a hundred and 88 prescriptions for aid and dying medication were written by physicians for patients. And in 145 of those, the medication was dispensed by a pharmacy. Again, that's not a huge number. Organ's estate, many of us seem to associate

with physician assisted suicide. And that's, they allowed, they've allowed physician assisted suicide legally there since 1987, with their historic death with dignity act. And Oregon, as of January 22, 2021, prescriptions have been written for a grand total of under 3,000 people, 2,895.

And less than 2,000 people actually have taken the prescription, used it, and just the drugs that were legally prescribed to them under the law, 1,905. So less than 2,000 in over 23 years. And then it includes the deaths of many terminally ill people who moved there specifically so they could die in a physician assisted way. An important number to keep in mind, because some more let's have argued, as I know I've already mentioned, that if you legalize this nationwide, oh my gosh, people are gonna be checking out left and right.

It's gonna be an epidemic of death. But the stats do not back up that moral argument. The stats often don't back up so many people's arguments. Oregon's deaths with dignity act would probably not have been passed, had it not have been for the national debates stirred up by Dr. Kavorkin. The man who, whether or not you agree with his methods or even physician-assisted suicide in general,

you know, brought up to the public consciousness in a big way. Let's now look at his fascinating life and times in today's time suck timeline. Right after our Mitchell sponsored break, hope you enjoyed that brief break from death, remember back, death, and the doctor obsessed with it, await. Shrap on those boots, soldier, we're marching down a time-sunk timeline.

On May 26, 1928, the man who had become Dr. Kavorkin is born in Pontiac, Michigan just outside Detroit. Murad Jacob Reaper Kavorkin. I may have out of the Reaper. His parents were Armenian immigrants from present-day Turkey. His father, uh, Levan, um, so sorry, I think it's an Armenia early. Armenian, but from Armenian community in Turkey. His father, Levan, uh, Levan was born in 1887 in the village of Pasin and his mother, Sautinig, born in 1900s, born in the village of Godven. As you might remember from our episode on the Armenian Genocide, the turn of the century really not a good time to be in Armenian in Turkey or near Turkey. Luckily, Leavon got the fuck out.

He made his way to Pontiac in 1912, where he found work at at an automobile factory made sure to send money back to his family in Armenia. He enrolled at a night school to improve his English, learn mathematics. Leibon would even build a house where Dr. K was born. Sadly three years after moving to Michigan his family stopped riding back. I bet you can guess why the horrifying genocide We're roughly one and a half million largely Christian Armenians murdered by predominantly Muslim young Turks and the Ottoman Empire. Jack's grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins have been murdered. His family tree is savagely pruned. Jack's mother, Sansanig, left in 1915 to just 15 years old before finding refuge with relatives

in Paris before eventually reuniting with her brother in Pontiac. Many of her family members died as well. Leave on in Cincinnati, Met through the Armenian community in their new city, where they married, began their family. Couple had a daughter Margaret in 1926, followed by son Maraud, Jacob, Dr. K, and then their third and last child was Flora. And South Niggs tales of the genocide would be a big influence on young Jack Workin. Pontiac where Korkin was raised had become an important wagon and carriage manufacturing city in the 1880s and then it turned automobiles, auto parts, buses, trucks,

as the main source of industry. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 61,606, back in Dr. K's day. It was experiencing a boom from 34,273 people in 1920 to 64,928 and 1930. Damn, that really was a boom. This was because throughout the 1920s and 30s Pontiac had a tremendous growth in its population and size as tens of thousands of prospective auto workers moved there from the South to work on its GM auto assembly plants at Pontiac Assembly. African Americans came in the Great Migration, seeking work work education, the chance to vote, escape the oppression of Jim Crow in the South. In the early 1930s, Leavon lost a job at the automobile foundry, but found work as a contractor, and in time became a successful sewer and water main contractor, making a lucrative living as the owner of

his own excavating company. So we get laid off from making cars, best thing they ever happen to him. Second best thing, after fleeing Armenia or fleeing Turkey before being murdered. As children, the three Kvorkian siblings were encouraged to perform well in school and all demonstrated high academic performance. Three smarties. A prococious child Jack loved to play war games, doing paper mache helmets, wielding potato masher as hand grenades, and empty lot across from the local hospital became his, uh, uh, Bella Woods, uh, Vimey Ridge for done battlefields on the

Great War. I'm guessing fantasized a lot about killing Turks as well. Uh, leave on and Santa Nick, raise Jack and his two sisters to have everything that they had lost. And in their nightly stories, you know, they kept the old ghosts alive. When not the trenches are on the death march, Jack memorized baseball stats. Hell yeah. Same. Also drew cartoons. Me too. Also invented Limericks and taught himself German and Japanese. Me not. Nope. I stopped doodling and memorizing ERAs and home run totals. So he was smarter than me grown up. So what? Excuse me. He stripped

a wood from a band in the houses to build bond fires where he roached the potatoes until hot, black peels of charcoal flaked off of them. I also did not do that. That was a taste that would never leave him. Later years when a kivorkin had no fixed address, friends who put him up would notice that he would often use their fireplaces to make himself dinner, which is fucking weird. Or a funny quirk. I've never known anyone to cook in a fireplace. I love the thought of having him over as a house guest. You know, never seen that fireplace cooking before and then you know you get it for

breakfast and he's got like a skinned rabbit on a spit in your fireplace. Morning! Rabbits almost cooked. Potatoes are almost done. You're just in time for breakfast. Jack was able to enter Easter in junior high school where when he was in the sixth grade and by the time he was in high school, he had taught himself German, Japanese, and preparation for military service, but then World War II ended before he came of military age. So that's pretty cool, you know, dude was prepping to fight tyranny. Learning the languages of the enemy. It's intense.

Thanks to that intensity, he didn't have a lot of close friends growing up while other kids were figuring out dating or messing around with go carts, going to some sock hops, whatever he was studying German, Japanese, intensely pursuing other academic interests. His interest in language specifically, the origin and complexities of words would continue for the remainder of his life. The young Jack Kavorkin was described by his peers

as an able student interested in art and music as well. Basically, he was highly intelligent, motivated young dude, graduated with honors from Pontiac High School in 1945 at the age of 17. He worked in the intent of the University of Michigan School of Engineering between 1946 and 1948, originally planned to be a civil engineer. But in the middle of his freshman year, he was like, nope, I'm going to focus on botany and biology instead. So, I'd take classes in chemistry, mathematics, engineering drawing, rhetoric, history, psychology,

also German and Japanese. By the middle of his freshman year, he already set his sights on medical school. Going forward, he would take 20 credit hours instead of the normal 16th semester. That's a big course load to meet the 90-hour medical school requirement as quickly as possible. Then as a med student, he didn't just learn with the goal of repeating what he'd been taught. He began experimenting. He began taking measurements of pupils of cadavers on the theory that his findings would change the imprecise science of estimated the time of death.

These experiments would be ignored at this time, but then he returned these experiments later in a would be useful. I think this shows Dr. K was interested in not just accepting the status quo he wanted to make advancements Dr. K graduated with a degree in clinical pathology 1952 completed his internship at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit by the end of 1953 And there was a moment early in his internship that left him seriously questioning the way doctors dealt with the agony of the dying as he would later describe it I was making rounds one night and there was this woman who was dying of liver cancer. It was horrible. Her belly was swollen up so much her skin was almost

transparent. You can see the veins. She was in horrible, intractable pain. It looked like she was pleading for death with her eyes, but we couldn't give her that. We had to keep her going, prolonging the agony. It was cruel and barbaric. Excuse me. I hear them again to read literature of classical antiquity, pertaining to how doctors and Athens and Rome's thought it was their duty to relieve the suffering of the terminally ill when a disease had run its course by helping them expire peacefully. He first realized that while suicide was regarded as more or less sinful in all major Western religions, a violation of the God-given sanctity of life decree, it was often accepted by the classical civilization that shaped Western culture. To Kavorkian, that was a big sign that ethics were in part a

matter of time and place, right? And the ethical opinion could be reframed as something cruel, like the woman with liver cancer. I find this fascinating as well. Always have. How subjective so much of our ethics are, right? Ethical subjectivism. One culture, for example, as, you know, execute citizens for acts of homosexuality and adultery. Another passes zero legal judgment on either act, selling a certain drug could send you to prison for life in one nation, in another totally legal. Prostitution of crime in one country,

seen as normal as another. The act of the age of consent varied pretty wildly over time and throughout different nations. One time in place, a 30 year old, marrying a 15 year old, right? Get in fucking prison, pito. In another, congrats to the newlyweds, shooting an unarmed burglar, murder in some countries, justice in others, assisted suicide, wrong and illegal, or legal and decent. All depends on the time in place it happens. From 1953 to 1955, Kavorkin served for 15 months as first lieutenant general medical officer

in preventative medicine in Korea. While in Korea, over there the US Korean War, he finally got to put his Japanese language skills to use working in medical intelligence, while not attending to injured combatants or trying to get information out of capture Japanese officers or soldiers. Kavorkin would pass the time practicing Bach on his flute, teach himself Latin and Greek. He was a very eccentric guy, he was a fucking nerd and I mean that in a good way.

Love it. But, uh, Katas, no one knew he'd never had that many friends. I wonder when I started going to the research this week, why he never married, barely dated, starting to make sense. Hey, hey, Jack, we're heading out some clubs, liquor and ladies. Woo, you in, buddy. Sorry, I simply must respectfully decline your warm invitation. Please pass my deepest apologies to the fellas. I'm behind on myself and pose classical language studies, you see, and I also simply must finish memorizing Ticata and Fugan D minor. The incompleteness of my present ambition currently haunts me. Yeah, okay, Jack, yeah, I'll tell.

Punisher's under the US, Kavorkin entered a medical residency in pathologic anatomy at the University of Michigan Hospital while serving his residency. Kavorkin became fascinated by death and the act of dying. He would not like a crazy creep at all. Sit for hours, staring into the eyes of the dead. Okay, uh, when an electrocardiogram in the hospital, uh, Ward's signal that a patient's heart was about to stop. If I were you would tape open his her eyes and snap photographs, it is written. Still with the fucking eyeballs this guy, uh, hoping that they were unconscious while he did that.

Guessing they had to have been right down to hospital or family members would have stood for jack doing that if the patients were aware. He was doing that. Some poor bastard is dude, my fucking quiddit! So I'm touching my fucking eyelids, I'm dying, you dick! A caivorkin capture the retinus color over time as it shifted to pale orange red, then yellow, then finally gray.

And his findings, invaluable from medical examiners, looking to determine time and death. After the fact, we're published in a scholarly article in the American Journal of Pathology. It was back at this time long before it became the face of a system suicide that Kavorkin's colleagues took to calling him Dr. Death. Dr. Death's research soon took him deep into the University of Michigan's library, where he was thrilled to discover that 13th century Armenian physicians had performed medical experiments on criminals condemned execution. For Kvorkin, vivisection dissecting something while still alive, not a breach of medical ethics.

Wow. Flashbacks now of the Unit 731 episode and World War II era Japan's heinous medical experimentation. They tried some vivisections as did the Nazi doctors. The way Jack Todd, the revelatory investigation of those condemned bodies further the development of medicines that would save lives in the future. And that made the torture all worth it. It was definitely a greater good guy. He felt that convicts had contributed enormously to the store of human knowledge and their deaths, and therefore not been meaningless. And he's right, but you can see

probably how this use of this kind of greater good argument to justify a lot of things that are helpful for society overall are also pretty evil for the people being sacrificed. It makes me think about like a climate change, right, the destruction of the Amazon. Centuries of environmental damage thanks to industrial pollutants,

the collective carbon emissions of billion of us meat sacks and all of our vehicles and factories. Eventually, unless we change the course we're on, we will make the planet unlivable at some point. That is what all the best scientists are saying. What is the best, most direct way to avoid that? Well, I would argue it's to kill billions of people. If we kept the smartest people, the tech and industrial innovators also kept enough workers to keep manufacturing going for those who remained, but got rid of say, I don't know, seven or so billion other people, not needed to maintain the quality of life for the roughly one billion remaining people, and maybe that imposed a family limit of no more than three kids for any couple.

The world would quickly be much cleaner. So much food for everyone who remained, just tech in industry, especially once, you know, we get robots going to do everything from repair and fly planes to plant and harvest food. It would be overall maybe the closest humanity has ever had to a utopia. But you know, seven billion isn't people have to fucking be murdered and cold blood for that. Doing what we best for the planet overall, perhaps the best thing for humanity's future would require an event that would make comparatively in terms of total lives lost, the Holocaust, pale in comparison to the evilness of this event.

So the greater good argument, it's tricky one. In 1956, still focused on death, Kavorkin began writing on the death penalty in the participation of prisoners in clinical research. Inspired by research, they described medical experiments the ancient Greek conducted on Egyptian criminals. Kovorkin formulated the idea that similar modern experiments could not only save valuable research dollars, but also provided glimpse into the anatomy of the criminal mind. Oh boy.

Kovorkin insisted that he was personally opposed the death penalty, but if the state was going to be in the business of taking human lives, costing taxpayers, millions of dollars every year, those deaths ought to be in the service of life. Instead of the electric chair, the gas chamber, or the firing squad, he proposed that a convict would be put under, then while unconscious, can't feel any of this, their body, particularly their brain, would be, you know, experimented on. And then there are organs would be carefully harvested for transplant surgeries. Finally, you know, death would come via a lethal dose of anesthesia. Good work and even visited the Ohio Penitentiary to cannabis a group of prisoners to get their thoughts.

It's exact proposal. Do that balls. How do you feel about me fucking, you know, cutting you up with experiment on you? You're still alive. Both most inmates were appalled, but a few saw in his idea the possibility of atoning for the unforgivable mistakes they had made, right? Some atonement here. As the first man he interviewed later articulated in a letter, it would help me think that I didn't succeed

in making a total mess of my life, that I may have helped someone somewhere sometime. And I gotta say, I actually like this idea. Here, here me out, right? I mean, if the prisoner being killed doesn't feel any more pain than they would being given, say, a lethal injection, why not experiment?

I mean, seriously, a valuable medical insight can be gained. I know it seems cringey, like something I have a fucking saw movie, some hostile torture porn movie, not to documentary something, but take emotions out of it and logically, I think this is great, but as you can imagine,

this idea does not gain serious traction politically. The voting public, too many of them, just too squeamish to support something like this. It doesn't seem decent. 1958, Dr. K advocated his view in a paper presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Now his nickname of Dr. Death really starts to catch on. And some minor media attention results in his ejection from the University of Michigan Medical Residency Program. First of many times, the fellow medical community would be like,

let's put some distance between us and him. From 1959 to 1960, Dr. Gvorkin finishes his residency at Pontiac General Hospital now, Mostyl and Pontiac. Gvorkin hears about Russian experiments, transfusing blood from fresh corpses into living patients patients performed by a team of Soviet researchers. And he enlists the help of his friend and medical lab tech, Neil Nichol, his friend for life, to simulate these same experiments. Oh boy, Neil would be his like mad cap medical collaborator

for years. He's played by John Goodman and the HBO film about Kovorkin, you don't know Jack. Jack played by Al Pacino. The results of their blood transfusions from the dead experiments actually really successful. Kovorkin believed the procedure could help save lives in the battlefield. I agree. If blood from a bank was unavailable, doctors could transfuse the blood of a corpse into

an injured soldier. Kovorkin's method was to remove the blood from the corpse via the neck within six hours of death. A death that would have to be sudden and unexpected, such as one from combat to avoid post-mortem clotting. The dead would be held at a 30-degree angle, drawing the blood through standard equipment, the blood and cavericain's experiments, thoroughly tested to be a matching type, free of disease, clean for transfusion. When the perfect test subject, a 30-year-old heart attack victim, turned up at the hospital, could all neil volunteer to be cavericain's guinea pig. He laid down on the floor and exited deceased while Kavorkin

connected a syringe cut. This is so well, syringe pump and a tube from the dead man's jugular vein directly into Neal's arm after receiving 400 CC of blood Neal felt fine. The next attempt went slightly awry, however. Female volunteer who received a transfusion directly from the heart of a mangled 14-year-old hit and run victim became dizzy and nauseous. Turned out to volunteer had effectively ingested a yeager bomb.

Teacher Benout, the teenager, had been out drinking. Other transfusions hit and miss. One transfusion donor was a 51-year-old male, died suddenly while mowing his lawn. The recipient and 82-year-old woman received three pints of blood over three days and then dying after the third day. But she had other health problems. Her death may have had more to do with underlying conditions Then getting a blood transfusion from a corpse may have had more to do with being 82 Another donor died in the car accident 44 year old white male

recipient of 78 year old white male with heart disease intestinal cancer congestive heart failure He received two pints of donor blood died nine days after being admitted, but again, serious underlying conditions. Third corpse donor, 46 year old white male, dead and arrival to hospital, recipient, 56 year old female and testinal cancer patient with severe anemia. She's discharged from the hospital three days after receiving a pint of corpse blood.

And she was fucking fine. Kavorki noted the presence of increased sugar potassium and non-protein nitrogen and condовor blood, less than optimal, but not a rate major roadblock to transfusions. Also noted that corpse blood usually washed down the drain anyway, right? It's being wasted. It's why I want to use it for the living. What does big deal? We use corpse blood for life.

He wrote most of these objections are more imaginary than real, a sort of emotional reaction to a new and slightly distasteful idea. Our eight pints and over 27,000 transfusions in Russia bear this out. Not a single hint of a reaction or other ill effect was observed by us personally, on very close clinical observation, despite the fact that two of the patients were already more abond, and very toxic, and none of the four had any anti-allergic therapy. His research and experiments found cadaver blood perfectly suitable for a donation to living patients.

So long as it was drawn less than six hours after death and used within 21 days. Kavorkin pitched this idea to the Pentagon, figured it could be used and be at NAMM, but denied a federal grant to continue the research, right? Just too sad, too weird for people. Instead of research, only confirmed his reputation as an outsider, jolted his colleagues, how frustrating for him. Again, great idea. I see no logical objections to this, only emotional ones.

When you're dead, it's pretty simple. You don't need to fucking blood anymore. But the living do. But the thought of someone taking the blood from a loved one who was just past, you know, it just feels sad. Feels like desecration to many. I'm guessing. I get it emotionally.

Adding insult to injury as a result of a blood transfusion experimentations, Kavorkin becomes infected with hepatitis C. Further cementing his outsider status and status as just fucking weirdo. Jack and Neil sometime around 1960, petitioned the hospital for funding to perform the first in vitro fertilization of a man by implanting a fetus into Neil's belly. And they are denied. Well, that the fuck, were they gonna add a womb inside the belly? Where was that gonna go? Where was the fetus supposed to grow?

Right? His fucking colon, just gonna slip back there, were they gonna try and make some kind of butt baby? Was it a butt baby supposed to eat poop? Which I could have found more details about that experiment. I'm guessing Jack didn't disclose a lot of details because it maybe embarrassed him a bit or something. Also, 1960 is father leave on dies of a heart attack, age of 73.

Jack is close to his dad, takes the loss hard, buries himself further into his work. During the 1960s, strange maybe mad, maybe genius, maybe both, Kavorkin would move all around, hold a bunch of different positions. From December 1960 to July 1961, he is an associate pathologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Ann Arbor from 1961 to 1966, an associate pathologist at Pontiac General Hospital. As far as I know, he did not ask for permission to make a butt baby from either hospital. He did conduct more carved blood transfusions out. He's also published in articles.

1966 publication is titled Beyond Any Kind of God, and he would write, Dreamless Sleep and Tails Absolute Nothingness, which we crave and know to be indispensable. It is an experience which affords us the unique opportunity to begin to know the inscrutable essence of absolute non-existence, which rules out any implication of transfer or transformation or transition from this world to any other world or to anywhere, anything or anyone else. There could be no heaven hell, purgatory, paradise, nirvana, amokshah or reincarnation and no god.

Ah, I don't know about this. Not sure that dreamless sleep is the best evidence for a lack of existence of a higher power or a next plane of existence. But okay, his frustration with the religious right becoming more and more clear, I think here. Right? He had no use for religion, nor for any arguments based in religion, and a lot of those arguments were used against his work over and over. This from 1967 to 1969, he served as the medical director at the Medical Diagnostic Center in Southfield, Michigan, another suburb of Detroit, not far from Pontiac.

Also in the mid-60s his mom's diagnosed with advanced abdominal cancer. If we can watch this, his doctor simultaneously restrict the amount of morphine she can receive, even as they fight for her life, the pain is enormous. She says her treatment amounted to torture. Clearly, this pushed him further towards advocating for assisted suicide later. She would die in December 20th, 1968. Jack now overcome with grief and loss of both parents. He later said in the years following his mother's death, they both would often come to him in night at night in dreams. As a way of mourning, Kavorki, and turned to oil painting, enrolled

in adult education classes at night, ignoring the moldy still life set up for the other students, Jack painted death itself, cadavers, schools, and surrealistic situations oftentimes. And he was actually, I think, very good. You can look up a stuff, create a stuff that would look great on the set of scared of death. He would often listen to Handel's Messiah as he worked. He gets very obsessed with this. From 1970 to 1976, Kavorkin works as a pathologist at Saratoga General Hospital in Detroit. Still, sadly, zero but baby experimentation performed here. Old Neal's colon, stomach remained feed is free. During this period, he publishes more than 30 journal articles and booklets about his philosophy on death. 1976,

Dr. K now 38 moved California. Why the said move? Well frustrated by the hospital bureaucracy that Shundin restricted his research, Gavorkin quits medicine, breaks up with his first and only ever girlfriend, Jane. We know almost nothing about her. Pax up is Volkswagen van, drives Los Angeles where he puts his life savings into making a film

about Handel's Messiah. Compose in these weird dude. Compose in 1741, Handel's Messiah. Compose in these weird dude. Compose in 1741 Handel's Messiah was a three-part aura, aura, auretario, similar to an opera. The three parts were drawn from three parts of the Bible, Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah's birth, New Testament stories of the birth of Jesus, his death, and his resurrection, and verses relating ultimately to judgment day, with the final chorus text drawn from the book of Revelation, inspired by Christ's perseverance in the face of martyrdom. Kavorkin saw his Messiah as his chance

at some kind of redemption, yet lacking any experience, producers or distributors with a severely limited budget, his in a bridge screen adaptation of the eroitorial Messiah by George Frederick Handel ended up a fucking disaster. Stock footage, badly reenacted biblical scenes. There's not a well-advised project. He for sure had a touch of madness in him. Unfortunately, this realist now lost. I would love to watch a clip. A description of it says that it shows surrealistic images

of elated shepherds, juxtaposed with close-ups of blinking eyeballs. And a young boy in crutches. It's cool. Can't find any evidence. He was doing a shit ton of LSD around that time or any other hallucinogens. He didn't need him, I guess, just to work on really weird projects. I could work in and hope that audiences overwhelmed by handle score wouldn't even notice the terrible quality of the film's visuals.

Oh, buddy. Now, broke. He started sleeping out of his van, picks up the odd job as a substitute pathologist. Also writes a book of poems about dieting called Slimerix because why the fuck not? They advocated a demi-diet of always leaving half the food on your plate. You're about to, how your masses consumed

maybe, maybe fitly entombed, will weigh heavily upon the mortician. I, he lived like this for several years. This really weird guy in a van, sometimes working at a hospital, sometimes writing fucking dumb pommies about eating, uh, goes broke as an atheist trying to produce a film about an 18th century classical composition based on the Bible. He lived life on his own terms.

Then beginning in the early 80s, Kavorkin gets a show on Berkeley Public Access Cable. This is great. In a program called The Door, he played a professional tour guide of the mind complete with black turtleneck floating visions of his head flash across tripping neon patterns amid crashing thunder as the doctor on the green screen promises the viewer a trip into some very hazy realms of human existence. One episode ends with Kavorki discussing multiple universes and asking solemnly for what forms of existence are we the amoebas. Here's the beginning of an episode on YouTube right now. It seems like it might be like the pilot episode.

To me, it feels like a cross between a college lecture and the Twilight Zone. He's sitting on this porch. Welcome. Say, how would you like to take the most mysterious, exciting, adventurous some trip in the world. I'd love it. We're going to do that. Awesome. In this little half hour. Cool, Jack. Now, what we're going to take a trip into is a little different than you think. It's not geographical. How do you know what I think? It's sort of mental. Okay. It's into these very hazy realms of human

existence about which nobody knows anything for certain. The world's most brilliant philosopher or scientist, they all guess, nobody knows. We're gonna guess too, but we're gonna use reason in common sense. We're not gonna use any prejudices, no dogma, no bias. You're gonna use your basic intelligence and we're gonna stretch it to the limit and it's gonna be fun. Okay, I'm in. I'm in, Jack. Well, the time has come for us to enter the realm of pure human reason. Yes. So come along with me as we travel through the door. Through the door.

And the camera zooms in on the door, going out into space. Like I said, he was the interesting guy. I wish he would have snapped on that thing. You know, what are we here? Why are we doing this? Well, because of the fucking moralist and Michigan running the goddamn hospital wouldn't let me put one fucking butt baby in Neil. God damn it!

Didn't I prove myself I have so many patients. All I want is a little corpse blood and fucking one butt baby for my friend to see what kind of monster we can make. But then we'll give any funding. Out of the fun. 1984, prompt by the growing number of executions in the US. Kavorikin advocates an idea we already talked about earlier, given death, threatened made to choice to donate to organs, died by anesthesia, rather than poison gas for the electric chair.

He's invited to brief members of the California legislature on a bill that would enable prisoners to have this choice. His actions would see the attention of the media, now it becomes involved in the growing national debate on Dine with dignity. Following his dispute with a chief pathologist, Kavorkin Valkyrie's career was doomed by physicians who feared his radical ideas. And that was sort of true. The only venue that would publish his museums was an Israeli journal called Medicine and Law at this time.

Farad from his last hospital job, he now quote, retires to devote his time to painting music. A new documentary project on Handles, Messiah, he can't let it go. Also continues research for his death row campaign. Now 57, he's living off of savings. He had quite a bit, even though he'd lost it all, you know, earlier with that first Messiah project, he was super his savings. He had quite a bit even though he'd lost it all, or you know earlier with that first Messiah project He was super frugal He lived either in a van or in a small studio apartment own very little bought his clothes from throw shops only wanted to work on art music and death research

Then sadly before Kavorkin left California 1984 his artwork musical instruments compositions videos master films research papers, all of his personal belongings stolen from a storage facility. What a fucking terrible day that would be. Kavorki would not paint again until 1993, when he'd recreate some of his 18 pieces of stolen art. What he focused on instead was now, finally, bud babies. 1985, he's finally able to impregnate his buddy, Neil Nichols Columpt of Fetus. Somehow Neil is able to bring that baby to term.

And in late 1985, that baby would be put up for adoption and her name would be, you've probably heard of her, Emily Blunt. Yes, that Emily Blunt from the Quiet Place movies, the Devil wears Prada, so much more, John Krasinski's wife, she is Dr. des and kneels but baby. Look it up. Anything is possible when you sell your soul you're looming out. I'm kidding, blown was born in 1983. No, of course that sounds like I actually quite like Emily Blunt.

It's just funny to me that someone so talented and ridiculously attractive could have started off as a but baby. Kovorkian returned to Michigan 1985. That's what really happened. After putting Emily but baby blonde up for adoption. No. He did return and he moved into a small apartment in Royal Oak where he then wrote a comprehensive history of experiments on executed humans as one does, which was published in the journal of the National Medical Association. I fucking love how weird this guy was. Hey, Jack, you want

to come on have a drink with us, buddy? No, uh, no time, fellas. Sorry, I have to finish my comprehensive history of experiments on executed humans. If I, if I can't finish this, I will never get my Honda's Messiah project completed. Also, I just realized I'm making fun of him for dedicated his life to researching weird shits when I am the guy who regularly turns down social plans to research people like Dr. Death. Hello, pot making fun of kettle. 1986, Dr. Scott discovered a way to expand his death row proposal when he learned that doctors

in the Netherlands were helping people die by lethal injection. He decided to go check it out himself. During the summer of 1987, Kavorkin visits Netherlands where he studies techniques that allowed Dutch physicians to assist in the suicides of the terminal ill without interference from legal authorities. In the Netherlands, he meets Dr. Peter Admeral, a leading anesthesiologist whose underground work would later lead to the full legalization of voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands in 2000.

And Dr. Admeral told Kavorkin straight up that experimenting on the bodies of convicts was insane. I'm still for it. I mean, is the volunteer? Come on, they're dying anyway. Not because they're convicts, convicts, but anyone I'm still for it. I mean, is it volunteer? Come on, they're dying anyway. Not because they're convicts, convicts, but anyone should be able to volunteer for that. But, you know, I don't know, maybe I'm insane too. I have, you know, heard a lot of feedback in that regard from family and friends. Sometimes fans, Dr. Admiral also convinced Dr. Kavorkin that the

best way to cheat death was to help people take control of their own endings. Dr. Kavorkin doubles down and his death focus gets to writing more right to di articles 1988. And we're almost never published. By 1989, most American medical journals were rejecting Dr. K's increasingly controversial articles. Few people were paying attention to him. So he tries a new approach. He begins writing new articles this time

about self-administered euthanasia or metaside as he called physician assisted suicide. He was inspired by a Detroit area man named David Rivlin, 38 year old paralyzed in 1971 at the age of 19 in a surfing accident that severed his spine. David had struggled bravely to make an independent wheelchair bound life for himself until a failed spinal operation now left him further paralyzed and find now to a nursing home bed unable to breathe without a respirator tube down his throat Artificially inflating and deflating as long as he's completely paralyzed

He was facing 20 or 30 more years of life as how he saw it a gasping a mobile head on a completely paralyzed and mobile body And he decided he wanted to die David knew that he literally couldn't do it himself He begged his nursing home doctors to help him. They refused unwilling to risk liability and controversy, which led Riveland to make a public appeal and a Detroit newspaper for some doctor. Any doctor to come forward help him carry out his final wish. Kavorkin responded. He decided what Riveland needed was a way of pulling the plug on himself by himself. Riveland was still able to manipulate a stick held in his teeth. If Kavorkin could create a device with a hair trigger button that Riven could push with

this stick. He could give the excerpt from the ability to end his life with what he considered dignity. This whole business would fall into a legal and ethical gray area somewhere between what medical ethicists call passive euthanasia and active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia, which was sanctioned in carefully limited circumstances by the American Medical Association's Council on Medical and Judicial Affairs, involves a doctor withdrawing or withholding life saving or life sustaining technology from a patient, such as respirators that artificially keep lungs going, feeding tubes that prolong a persistent vegetative state in a patient who would die otherwise.

Essentially, passive euthanasia is a doctor merely stepping out of the way of a natural course of one's death, but active euthanasia involves a doctor stepping into cause death, say through lethal injection. And active euthanasia nationwide at that time vehemently condemned by the American Medical Association and most medical ethicists. So Kavorkin created a machine he called the Thanatron, named after the Marvel Super villain, Thanos. They know, right? Genocide of Warlord from Titan. I think it's Thanos.

Who wanted to bring stability to the universe by wiping out half of all life at every level through arranging the Infinity Stones into the Infinity Gauntlets, now it's fingers, he did do that, but the Avengers, you know, go back in time and you know, they stop him. Or maybe Kavorkin called his machine Thanatron because that is Greek for instrument of death. Probably that. He assembled it out of $45 worth of material, some sources say $30 from the Salvation Army. So from essentially a discarded erector set,

some old toys and bits of jewelry, he figures out how to create death, with the press of a button. Even if he hates that he did this, I mean, fucking points for creativity and resourcefulness. Three bottles suspended from a rickety beam, one filled with a sailing solution to open a patient's veins,

another with barbeduates for sedation, a third with potassium chloride to stop the heart. After Dr. connected the patient to an IV, he or she would pull a chain on the device to start the lethal medications flowing. He called it his Rube Goldberg Suicide Device. That's a solid reference. Rube Goldberg machine, named out for American cartoonist

Rube Goldberg is a chain for American cartoonist, Rube Goldberg, is a chain reaction type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way. Rube worked as a cartoonist from 1907 all the way to 1963, drawing a lot of stuff like that. It's a work in Stanutron, allowed the patient to administer the dose themselves, handing over the active suicide to the individual, if only in a nominal way because the doctor would still have to provide the materials to make it work. So was that passive or active? A little bit of both. And one way the patient, not the doctor,

takes the final fatal action of flicking the death switch, making the doctor even more passive than the physician who passively pulls a plug on a respirator, for example. Ultimately, I think this inaction is what makes the doctor passive with a machine like this Yes, the doctor is providing the gun, but the patients pulling the trigger so to speak On the other hand critics contend the doctor hooking up a patient to a machine is active in a crucial sense He brings into the picture the daily drug He doesn't really let death take its course, but gives it a final boost Essentially the doctor does not pull the trigger, but does provide the bullet

Not much that different at least on the surface than a doctor saying, don't take 20 pills because you'll die. And then leaving a bottle of 20 pills somewhere accessible, giving the patient a hard wink. But again, he or she, not forcing the pills down anyone's throat. But admittedly in my experience,

I seem to be a much more stride promoter of the importance of personal responsibility than the average person. I received questionable parental advice, discipline growing up in moments like everyone else, I've dated some people who are not good for me, actively harmful, I've hung out with friends who are not good influences, but at the end of the day,

I claim 100% responsibility for every shitty thing I've ever done. Others may have handed me symbolic guns in moments, but it was always up to me to pull the trigger or not. But I think I'm in the minority, thinking this way. A lot of people, intelligent people, assigned to work in a much more active role in these deaths than I do. In an article published in the American Journal of Forensic

Psychiatry, Kavorkin outlined guidelines for this assisted suicide. Eligibility limited to those who are mentally sound and unwavering, incurably ill and unbearably suffering, using placeholder names like Wanda and it all. And we'll be ready. I see you there. But another doctor intervened with a more conventional solution before Kavorkin had a chance to test his invention on David Riveland. David was taking respirator and all to the

house of a friend. We're a sympathetic doctor sedated him, disconnected him from the respirator, leaving him to die naturally of his fixation. While report he died peacefully with dignity. And that doctor never charged anything. Meanwhile, Dr. K now coming up with ideas about what to leaving him to die naturally of his fixation. While a report he died peacefully with dignity. And that doctor never charged anything. Meanwhile, Dr. K now coming up with the idea is about what to do with his new machine. After years of rejection from national medical journals, media outlets, Cvorkin becomes the focus

of national attention for his machine and his proposal to set up obitariums, death clinics basically, or bit, obitariums that's made upward. Where doctors could help determine the ill and their lives. death clinics basically where or or bit uh, uh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, David Letterman would joke about stuff like this and various top 10 lists. One of them was Letterman's top 10 promotional slogans for Dr. Koworkin suicide machine. Number five, Klaus Von Buello says, I like it so much about the company. Number four, while I'm killing myself, I'm also cleaning my oven. Number eight, isn't it about time you took an honest look at your miserable, sinking life? I don't usually like, or didn't usually like Letterman's top 10 lists.

We found a lot of them to be pretty corny, but those are pretty good. Gag on Jay Leno would focus on imaginary improvements to the machine. One of them being the addition of a snooze alarm to allow the patient 10 more minutes after he's hit the switch. I think that's pretty funny. Another would allow the phenotron to be activated by the clapper. Well done, late night staff writers. A reporter would actually ask him about a snooze button in 1991.

Shouldn't it be some way to posit? And Kavorkin said, absolutely not. This is a job for me. I get paid for this. I'm not loading up all my gear, prowling around the country for some wishy-washy coward to back out at the last seconds. I'm not a crybaby coach.

I'm a death Sherpa. I'm the Green Reapers right hand man. If you need a snooze button on an execution machine, you shouldn't be put down for being in pain, you should be put down for being a snively little sissy bitch. Are you a little sissy bitch? Are you? At that point, the reporter tried asking him, like, are you kidding?

And he just kept saying, over and over. Are you a little sissy bitch or not? Are you? And then he was like, eventually, two inches from the reporter's face, just kept yelling this. And then the guy just shook his head, walked away, as then Kavorkin yelled, I have made butt baby smarter than you. And of course that never happened.

If you did, I'll be playing the video right now, so you can at least hear the audio. Now what Jack said was, no, because we don't take the guard off the switches till we're absolutely sure we're going to go. I talked to them. Now for long discussion, and they're absolutely sure I repeat,

you sure you don't wanna stop, you sure you don't wanna change your mind. Let me take the guard off. Then they hit the switch. If they still wanted to go after they hit the switch, I can't, I can stop it easily. I can pull the needle out. They can pull the needle out before they fall asleep.

Up until the last moment they have control. Control be a key word in the value system that underlies Kavorkin's defense of his machine. The ability to control death otherwise, so random and prolonged was very important to him. His medical ethos actually went even further. To control life after death in a way, for example, by harvesting viable organs to save other people.

That's the biggest misunderstanding about me, Kavorkin, would say that I'm obsessed with death. I'm really pro-life. My writings are all about trying to get medical benefits from death. Right? Ford Living makes an interesting argument here. Right? He found for the living to decide.

He fought for the living to be able to use what the dead no longer need like their blood. A groundbreaking article that helps Cervor Kins cause comes out in March of 1989. The physician's responsibility toward hopelessly ill patients is a second look, which carried the by-line of 12 respected doctors, caused a stir in the medical profession by endorsing consideration of physician-assisted suicide. 10 of the 12 co-author stated they believed that it is not immoral for a physician to in the medical profession by endorsing consideration of physician assisted suicide. Ten of the 12 co-authors stated they believe that it is not immoral for a physician to assist in the rational suicide of a terminally ill person.

Clearly the subject of assisted suicide deserves wide and open discussion. Dr. Kavorkin reading this article immediately beats off for the first time in a good 15 years. J.K. If you look at it, I need to say J.K. But I just would feel bad if that's what someone remembered most about this suck, the Kavorkin beat off to an article about prestigious doctors considering this is suicide. 1990, Dr. Kavorkin contacted by Janet Adkins, 54-year-old organ woman who suffers from Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's in incurable condition causes progressive loss of memory inside other mental functions.

Most Alzheimer's patients don't choose or plan suicide. Doctors who deal with the affliction report like acute mental suffering, doctors who deal with the affliction report, little acute mental suffering, at least in the later stages, in part because as the disease progresses, victims lose a sense of what they lost. It's often said this disease in the end, harder on the family of the victim than the victim themselves. They become more and more childlike, but not children who agonize over having one spin adults. So why did Janet choose to enter life? According to her husband, Ron,

Janet's mentally cutie was something she really prided herself on. He described how she had been the light in our lives. She was always coming up with new ideas, always abreast of new philosophical thinking, and she just enlarged our life because of her interest in curiosity. She'd found out about her Alzheimer's with when certain cognitive problems presented

themselves. First when Janet suddenly struggled to site read music. Music had been the glue of the attitudes. Thirty-year marriage. They'd met in college when they were both studying the French horn. Now that they're three sons and grown and left the house, they love to spend their evening together site reading music. Ron would play the flute.

Janet would play the piano. It's fucking adorable. Hill, Hill, Lucifina. Yes, Lucifina can love sweet and tender moments as well. While they used to say for hours and nights, sight reading music, now Janet was stumbling through pieces. Then she started having trouble spelling. Janet Ron thought at first, maybe just really hoped that it might have just been Janet's glasses, but a consultation with her doctor gave them bad news. It was Alzheimer's. Future now look bleak.

One day, maybe not in the far future, Ron would have to do everything for Janet. Dress her, get her to eat, make sure she didn't wander off. All while she had no idea who he was, while Dr. said that Janet may have had three or four good years left with minimal memory impairments, this was all too much to bear for Janet. Gradually losing her memory was unbearable for her. Now she was an intense psychological pain, nearly 100% of the time, knowing she was losing what had made her, her, and knowing there was no cure.

This wasn't depression or anxiety, she could possibly medicate. Losing her identity was now inevitable. It was already happening. Horrible ball was rolling downhill, it would only pick up speed as it traveled. She also didn't want to put her husband wrong through so much despair, living life wondering if today was the day that he would wake up and his

wife would not recognize him. So Janet decides on suicide. In fact, long before Janet met Dr. K or was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she'd been a proponent of the right to die with dignity. She held spiritual beliefs about the impermanence of death that aligned well with leaving this realm to explore others. She'd read Elizabeth Kubla Rosses on Death and Dine, published in 1969, a book that postulates that those experiencing grief go through a series of five emotions. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. She also read the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture that translates to the song by God. She believed in reincarnation. Life is a stepping stone in the process of existence.

And now more on Cuba Ross, we mentioned exploring her earlier, the author, like Kavorkin, she added a lot to the national discussion of death, also like Kavorkin, she had some crazy ideas. This is actually my favorite part of the episode coming up. She had ideas, crazier, maybe in some ways, than putting a fetus in your guy friend's body so he could have a butt baby.

I really hope. Who worked his buddy, Neil Nichol had a uterus, by the way, the Jackson never mentioned somehow in Plantin. I don't know the fuck was going on there. Anyway, this sidebar on Kubla Ross, well worth the ride. Elizabeth Kubla Ross, who wrote on Death and Dine, was a pioneer in studying the Terminal Yale. And for several near-death experiences in her own childhood, she worked as a lab assistant

for refugees in Zurich, and only 13 years old during World War II. She worked as a lab assistant for refugees in Zurich and only 13 years old during World War II. She comes to America to be answer psychiatric residency in the Manhattan State Hospital in the early 1960s, began her career working to create treatment for those who were schizophrenic, along with those who faced a title, Hopeless Patient, a term used at that time to reference terminally ill patients. These treatment programs work to restore the patient's sense of dignity and self-respect. Kul-A-Ross also intended to reduce the medications that kept these patients overly sedated, found ways to help them relate to the outside world. Ross was horrified by the neglect and

abuse of mental patients, as well as the imminently dying. She found that patients were often treated with little care or completely ignored. In 1962, she accepted a position at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Their Kool-A-Ross worked as a junior faculty member, gave her first interview of a young, terminally ill woman in front of a room full of medical students. She wanted to depict where students, a human being who desired to be understood, excuse me, who desired to be understood as she was coping with her illness and how that impacted her life. She'd say, now you are reacting like human beings instead of scientists.

Maybe now you'll not only know how a dying patient feels, but you will also be able to treat them with compassion, the same compassion that you would want for yourself. During the 1970s, Kubla Ross became the champion of the worldwide hospice movement. The growth of end-of-life care facilities she traveled over 20 countries, six continents, initiating various hospice and palliative care programs. I mean, she did a lot of great shit. Then in 1977, she and her husband bought 40 acres of land in Escondito, California, near San Diego,

where she founded Shanti Nalaya, home of peace, a healing center for the dying in their families, and here her studies take a fucking weird turn. In the late 70s, after interviewing thousands of patients who had died and been resuscitated, Elizabeth Kubla Ross becomes very interested in out-of-body experiences, mediums, spiritualism, other ways of contacting the dead. She starts housing life, death, and transition workshops around the country in a broad, attracting hundreds of people, most of them facing imminent death, their families, and medical professionals

who work with the dyingine and this led to criticism First she began to offer in her workshops for the dine a grain of hope there is no death She said only life after life a happy existence in which all the physical ailments and mental problems of the body disappear I Believe this probably happens to but like 90% believe it right? I don't think I can ever believe it 100% because, you know, I haven't been dead yet. And I haven't met anyone who's been dead, like dead dead. Not for a few minutes dead.

You know, I'm talking like for a few hours of days. If someone I know comes back as a zombie after at least a couple days of being dead and is like, there's another room. Well, now I'm up to 100% and probably scared. Elizabeth Kubleros couldn't know what she was saying with 100% certainty, but she said it anyway. Her message was some critics noted the same kind of hope that many organized religions have offered man for centuries, right? This message added considerably to the popularity

of her workshops for the dine, according to her AIDS. Second, she raised scientific skepticism with her statements that she had encountered materialized supernatural spirits and had given names to four of these spirits. Mario, Anka, Salem, and Willie. Pretty sweet name for ghosts. Is Samir Mario? A Bula. A Bula. Aren't you a scareder?

I, they're shaking in the weebredchies, Mario, terrified of the ghost of Willie. Kuvarasaid she believed that she had lived in the time of Jesus. Under the ghost of Wheely. Kubera said she believed that she had lived in the time of Jesus under the name of Isabel. Cool story, bro. When she had criticism for this, she said that her critics would eventually see her as the prophet she was. Oh, here we go!

1976, this prophet meets Jay Baram, former Arkansas sharecropper who worked for 18 years for the story of his weirder. For a San Diego airplane manufacturer before he formed the church of the facet of divinity in 1975. Kubla Ross would say that Jay Barnum had healing powers now and the ability to communicate with spirits and this would lead to some fucking one of the oh my god this is so weird, quite a scandal.

Jan Elizabeth developed a therapy program for a new center now to the tune of 220, 220 bucks for a four-day session. Sessions included screaming, pounding of rubber hoses on wooden blocks, occasional super therapeutic physical activity of other kinds. So much wacky will happen now, it's getting so much weirder. Then you could also get an invite to a really peculiar show of Jays. Barb regularly conducted seances in which he acted as a medium to communicate with what he called afterlife entities.

It's Samir, it's Samario! Claiming he could channel the spirit to the departed and summon ethereal entities. J encouraged church members not just to talk to entities, but to literally fuck them. It's Samir, it's Samario, it's Samario, it's Samario, it's Samario, it's Samario, it's Samario, it's Samario. Not kidding. He encouraged church members to engage in sexual relations with the spirits, and some did.

Many of these sessions, former female members, the group of the group asserted, as they would assert later, they were instructed to enter a side room where they were joined a few minutes later in the dark by an unclosed man who talked convincingly of being an afterlife entity. The entity they asserted then proceeded to convince the women

that they should engage in sex with him, and most conceded that they did, then other women would be inspired to fuck Jay, who was pretending to be this ghost. What is this rape? I'm not sure what the fuck this is. It should be a crime of some sort, right? If you consent to fuck a ghost,

and then the ghost is like, you know, boo, you just got tricked, I'm a real guy. Aren't you a victim of some kind of sexual assault? I think yes, because that's not what you signed up for. This is so fucking weird. It makes my head hurt. Former members said that several male members in the group now start to complain that no female entities are participating them, right? Of course they do. No fair. How come you get all the ghost dick? We get like no ghost push, boo! And not the ghost kind of boo, either bring out the ghost push. Baram now asks female members if they wouldn't mind

playing the role of fuck spirits and some of them agree. So now these guys are being trick-raped, I guess. Every time I think I fucking hurt it all, we come across something like this. Eventually there are rumors of course that Baram is tricking members of the Church of the Fast and Vinniti to fuck it because he is exactly what he's doing. Kool-A-Ross' friend, Deanna Edwards, was invited to attend a service to ascertain whether these allegations are true or not. She finds Barham naked and wearing only a turban when she unexpectedly pulls masking tape off a light switch and

clicks on the light. Jesus Christ, he's covering a light switch with masking tape and then just walking around with a turban in a boner in the dark. Boo! Boo! You know my ghost dick! And this works. And the world has never had a shortage of con artists or fools for them to con.

In an interview out of the scandal, Mr. Barham says he knew that several women had alleged that he had posed as an afterlife figure, but he insisted he had never engaged in sex with any of them. Come on! He was just walking around naked with a heart on minding his own business and his semadio is doing the fucking. No one has ever come up to me and said, hey, I had sex with an entity, he said,

but it wouldn't surprise him if they had. I have no first hand knowledge of it, he's continued, but I will say this, the entities have said with us that yeah, it's possible if they can clone a physical body in his totality, then it is totally functional and they're capable of being intimate or having intercourse. And they also told us that if there was a value in it to that person, and it would be a

positive experience psychologically, physically, emotionally, spiritually, then yeah, they would not hesitate. I love these fucking phrase saying this to investigators. Despite being caught almost red-dicked after this accusation of sexual misconduct, Kubaross protects him for another year. Saying the allegations are made by vengeful detractors, right, defectors. Then she announces that the ending of her association with Jay Barnum in her shanti nalaya news letter June 7, 1991. Fuck is happening here.

Luckily not long after this, she changes her focus away from Ghost Dick to working for AIDS patients in an advocacy role and regain some of her earlier champion of good causes credibility. Not all. Once you go Ghost Dick clinic, you can't be taken totally seriously ever again. And then she lives until 2004. I told you that little sidebar was worth it, Jesus Christ.

How could I not dip into some Ghost Dick? Back to the main story now. The work of Elizabeth Kubla Ross had a big impact on Alzheimer's victim Janet Adkins. Like Kubler Ross, she'd gotten interested in spiritualism, not quite to the ghostic level, but quite a bit. She'd even gone to a medium, come to believe she'd once believed in Greece before, where she had nine kids.

Both Janet and Ron have been long time members of the hemlock society, as well the group that teaches the virtues and techniques of self-deliverance from prolonged suffering. In fact, she had planned the date of her death before consulting Dr. Kavorkin, planned it from November 30, 1989. I didn't want to spell Christmas for Ron of the Kids. Then she went on an article about a Dr. and Michigan named Kavorkin who'd cause some controversy when a local medical society journal refused to take out an ad. He tried to place for a suicide device.

Then they saw him on Donahue. On the Donahue show, demonstrating this device, Janet realized it used the same anesthetic, then legal drug method that Dutch used. Something she'd explored before finding out that some legal restrictions made ending her life in Holland and possible for her. So she and her husband get in touch with the quarkin. And it was not exactly boom, boom, boom,

let's get it done. In fact, when the adkins first got in touch with the doctor, he discouraged them, telling them to try and experimental drug treatment for Alzheimer's. She waited six months for contacting Dr. K again. April 1990 finds out the experimental drug didn't have any effect on her. Now, Kovorkin agrees to meet with her. In the meantime, Janet planned her memorial service arranged for a family therapist to meet her three sons. That's so sweet. Said goodbye to her friends and mother. Then Janet and

Ron traveled to Detroit to meet with him. June 4th, 1990, Kavorkin assists Janet in ending her life on a bed inside his 1968 Volkswagen van parked in a campground near his home in Michigan. He would say to a vanity fair reporter writing to 91 that he didn't want Janet to be the first to die on his suicide machine. He had thought that the ideal test case would be a terminally ill-cancer patient that Janet's mental anguish as opposed to physical anguish Made it so that she wasn't the right person to demonstrate his machine to the world That was why he'd encouraged her to go through with the experimental treatment

And he hadn't wanted their meeting to take place the way it did where it did He knew it would look bad even creepy vans do not have the best association when it comes to merciful dignified deaths But Kavorkin would say that they were turned away by other establishments, any other establishments they could find. Motel, private homes, funeral parlors. He even looked into renting an EMS vehicle, but they didn't rent them out. At one point a friend of Dr. K said he'd let them use his house in Detroit, but the last minute, that friend backed out, got creeped out.

So the van it was. I Dr. K informed them that they had no other choice but the van, Janet was determined to go through with it and said it was fine. So the adcons is, you know, they flew in June 2nd. Meet the doctor at a red roof in, have lunch, make a tape or they discuss what's gonna happen, have dinner with them in a place called Uptown Charley's, that evening, the tape, which will be later played

at the trial, shows three people sitting face in a stationary video camera in front of a pale institutional looking motel room Drips Janet a bucsum bespeckled woman in a bright plum colored blouse sits next to her tweety bearded bowtide husband Ron Looks like a New England college professor Janet doesn't seem sick, but evidence of her mental impairment appears There's Dr. Jack seeking answers from Janet getting them mainly from Ron Kavorkin begins with a traditional effort to see if the patient is located as to time,

place, and person. Ask her where she lives. She says Portland, Oregon. He asks where is Portland, Oregon? And she gives an embarrassed laugh. She doesn't know how to answer. Turns to her husband, says help. That's the pattern, the rest of the tape.

She gives short, passive, one word, or one sentence answers, hesitates, turns to her husband, who often jumps in with long descriptive explanations. Viewing the tape is hard to tell whether she is embarrassed sometimes or truly is just forgotten something like the exchange in which Dr. K tries to get her to say the word death. Janet, are you aware of your decision? He asks, yes, what does it mean? You have to get out with dignity.

Just what is it you want? Put it in simple English. Self-deliverance. No, simple, simpler than that. She laughs, says something inaudible. Do you want put it in simple English self-deliverance. No simple simpler than that. She laughs says something inaudible Do you want to go on? No, I don't want to go on. What does that mean the end of my life? What's the word for that? Euthanasia know what's the word for the end of life? You're dead All right, is that what you wish? Yes After dinner in uptown Charlie's day you say good night after making the following plan

Yes, after they're dinnered up town Charlie's day you say good night after making the following plan That consists would have a final day together for sightseeing June 3rd then say goodbye each other I'm so sad then the morning after that Monday morning the doctors to sisters pick Janet up at the Red Roof Inn Driver to the recreational vehicle hookup area of Grobland Oaks County Park Ron would stay behind in the motel and wait for the call afterward Janet didn't want him to witness the procedure. Early on the morning of June 4th, Dr. Kvorakin gets the sodium pentanol barbiturate, used to help patients relax before receiving a general anesthesia. And the lethal dose of potassium chloride out of a safe where he stored them. He packed the thantatron and his EKG machine into the van.

He's ready. Excuse me, so is Janet. But suddenly everything that could go wrong began to go wrong. First, when he's low in the sodium pentanol, pentathol, Jesus Christ. And to vial number two, he manages to spill the special sauce, causes the two-hour delay. He has to go 45 miles back home to get more. From home, he also brings back little needle-nosed pliers to some fine tuning to the chain linkages. Finally, he's ready to hook Janet up to vial number one, the harmless saline solution, problem there too. Asked to try four times, where he's ready to hook Janet up to vial number one, the harmless saline solution problem there too. That's dry four times where he's able to get the needle properly

inserted into her vein. Dear God, she must have been so irritated when she died. Then he worries that the saline isn't flowing fast now. So you have to jury rig a little box and raise the vial up onto it in order to increase the pressure. All these little hitches cumulatively have an effect on Janet. She's laying down on a mattress with a needle in her arm. She's telling Dr. K to be careful. Whenever he handles something delicate, she's fucking annoyed. It's kind of a big moment, dude. You're kind of making a weird.

Finally, everything is ready. Gavorkin's sister, Flora, reads Lord's Prayer. A few poems, Janet had chosen. The time had come, Dr. K tells her how to flip the switch, demonstrates with the safety on, then he takes the safety off, starts the cardiogram. It's at this point, Dr. Kay says that Janet looked like she was rising up to kiss me. The prosecutor would later question him sharply about this perception at a preliminary hearing.

Dr. Kay conceded that he couldn't be sure he was guessing that her last surge of life was meant to be kissed. It was really matter. Several minutes after the lethal potassium chloride should have kicked in, stopped her heart. The doctor thinks he notices there's still some anomalous activity on the EKG chart, but that was a mistake. The EKG line had gone flat. Janet Atkins is dead immediately after her passing to work and calls a police who arrest

and briefly detain him. Dr. Kiel also performs also informs Ron, who tried to leave the area quickly on the afternoon of his wife's death and initially tried to evade police questioning. Not until he was in the doorway of an airplane at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport and being questioned by a Michigan State police detective for a second time, did he acknowledge he was Janet's husband? He was not detained and leaves for Portland leaving behind his wife's body in personal effects. He left a cremation or left cremation instructions with the Detroit area funeral home, but the body was held for autopsy by the Oakland County medical examiner.

I kind of weird he would bolt like that, I think. Why not wait for her cremation remains and then bring them home personally. If Lindsey helps me die and then immediately ditches me, let it be known. I'm gonna haunt the shit out of her. Ron Atkins and two of his sons, then hold a news conference in Portland, read the suicide note Mrs Mrs. Atkins had prepared. After the Atkins story reaches the media, Kavorkin becomes a national celebrity, right? Dr. Death Big News. And he'd become more infamous with his subsequent trial. June 8th, 1990, Oakland County Circuit Judge, Alice Gilbert, issues of preliminary injunction, barring Kavorkin from assisting any further suicides in the state. At the same time, the County prosecutor charges him with murder. Kavorkin retains the flamboyant and iconoclastic

plaintiffs attorney, Jeffrey Figer, to defend him. At the time, Kavorkin was living in a one bedroom rental over a floor shop, or he spent his time outside and making a little money consulting on death on articles for European medical journals, under titles such as, right, these articles such as The Comprehensive, Biomedical Ethical Code for the medical exploitation of humans facing imminent as, write these articles such as a comprehensive bioethical code for the medical exploitation

of humans facing imminent and unavoidable death. My God. He didn't care too much for creature comforts, not even fancy food, mostly lived on heavily salted French fries.

He would live until the age of 83 and be skinny and have lots of energy. God, damn it. Eatin' fucking heavily salted French fries, motherfucker. I put on a few pounds if I just look at some French fries now. December 12, 1990 district court judge Gerald McNally dismisses the murder charges against Kivorkin due to Michigan's indecisive stance on physician assisted suicide.

Not one to be deterred by pesky societal hangups Dr. K continues. Despite dropping the murder charges, a trial would also continue. It would still take place early 1991. That trial was the result of the county prosecutors' determination to shut the doctor's suicide services down whether they were criminal or not. Prosecutor Medelski sought a permanent injunction to prevent the doctor from ever using his machine in Michigan again and from counting any new patients on how to kill themselves. Medelski told a reporter that he was trying to stop the doctor from roaming around the countryside in his van, zapping people. Pretty funny language. More urgently, he was trying to stop the doctor from roaming around the countryside in his van, zapping people. Pretty funny language.

More urgently, he was trying to prevent the death of at least 50 more people. The ones Kovorkins had said were waiting in line to be hooked up to his Sanitron. In Medelliske's view, he was asking the court to prevent the doctor from becoming a medical serial killer. And more, if the machine was made widely available, Medelliske was afraid it would be all too tempting

for those who wanted to take the easy way out. In some ways, I mean, he has a point here. Many of us have been anesthetized in a hospital for surgeries. We've experienced slipping easily into unconsciousness via sodium pentanol, pentothol. I hate that word. Should death be made that easy? There's a million ways to go yourself in the world, but the vast majority of them require some kind of decisive action, right?

The seconds it takes between getting together the supplies and committing the act can be crucial to changing your mind. If it just takes a button, pushing a button, lots of much quicker choice. Dr. Kays invention made death one of our biggest societal taboos, very user friendly. Perhaps two user friendly. Uh, Chief Defense Attorney Fyger countered that it was, it was not the prosecutor's role to impose his paternalist morality on the citizenry. I got a lot of the time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time.

I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of time. I got a lot of time I got a lot of I don't think he's wrong there. The civil trial would quickly grow controversial with the key choice by the prosecution. The Nazi doctors, medical killing, and the psychology of genocide. Notable book by distinguished psychiatrist and historian Robert J. Lichten still around, seemingly sharp as ever, 95, by the way. And his book would be

a mainstay of the prosecution's case, more ways than one. Lipson argues that there was an inevitable progression from the medicalization of killing introduced by the Nazis in the 30s to the would be a mainstay of the prosecution's case, and more ways than one. Lipson argues that there was an inevitable progression from the medicalization of killing introduced by the Nazis in the 30s to the mass murder in the camps in the 40s. At the heart of the Nazi enterprise, Lipson states in a quote that the prosecution would use for their final argument,

is the destruction of the boundary between healing and killing, that damn slippery slope. The prosecution decided to place a copy of the thick black Nazi doctor's book Conspicuously near the top of a stack of books on the prosecution table a stack position right next to prosecution exhibit 10 the confiscated danna tron Photographers TV cameras folks on the machine couldn't help but capture these stack of books next to it big bold letters in the spine of the Nazi doctors prominent

Look like a caption to the image of the machine. Essentially, Medelliske believed that the participation by doctrine killing, even if it's only assisting a voluntary suicide, would be the first step in a dangerous continuum, a slippery slope leading from medically assisted suicide to medically encouraged suicide, I'll say the poor and uninsured, to medically pressured suicide of those whose lives are not worth living, but expensive to sustain to involuntary euthanasia, right? Murder.

Very interesting argument, not a good one though, I don't think. Interesting now. To me, it's like, no, we can't legalize guns because if we did, the next thing that would be legalized would be everyone being able to shoot just whoever they wanted. Madelisk, you're making some crazy leaps of logic with his argument here. I think. Madeliskie passionate about his argument here for personal reasons. He had a grandfather and an uncle dying Auschwitz. Like of Orkin, he had close ties to the genocide or to two genocide. Because the uncle who died was a twin,

Madeliskie suspected he may have fallen victim to the kinds of medical experiments on twins that were pursued by Dr. Mengele in the camps. Right at the atmosphere in the courtroom, emotional, tense. Things get a little chippy on the last day in court. During an afternoon recess, Jeff Fager, Dr. K's attorney, tries to shove the stack of books featuring the Nazi doctors away from the mercy machine,

as he called it. So a photographer could snap a picture of the machine without Nazi doctors labeling it. Medelliski then tells Fager to take his hands off the book, did another right to touch the thing on my table. At this point, see the tells Fager to take his hands off the book, didn't have the right to touch anything on my table. At this point, see the doctor, Gavorkin walks up to the prosecutor, asks him just what relevance the Nazi doctors has

to this case anyway. Medellisky says something effective, guys like you are in that book by family suffer their hands. Oh, really says Dr. K, I didn't know the Nazis did animal a euthanasia. Oh, my drop. Medellisky at that point, I imagine, had to really focus on not punching Kavorkin.

And it's a good thing he didn't. Because that day, Kavorkin had packed the courtroom with an army of grown butt babies who would have fucking ripped him to shreds if given the code words to attack Emily Blunt. Sorry, hard for me to stop talking about butt babies. Despite Madelisk's passion argument, more emotion-favored Kavorkin in the trial.

Overwhelmingly, with the courts on, the civil trial was the families of the dead coming to-favored Kavorkin in the trial. Overwhelmingly, with the courts on the civil trial was the families of the dead coming to thank Dr. Kavorkin in droves for helping their loved ones die. They also heard from some patients themselves who had contacted Dr. K. Sherry Miller, 42-year-old mother of three, was so severely affected with multiple sclerosis that the only part of her wheelchair-bound body she could move was her left arm.

And she testified on behalf of the defense. There had been sworn in, Miller described in loud, quavering voice, barely under control, how the disease, I'm sorry, it wasn't barely audible, it was barely under control, how the disease had progressed, rubbing her, robbing her first of motor control, then control over her bodily functions, finally leaving her helpless, depend on her aging parents to wash and feed her with even her voice, her last link with this world being slowly strangled in her throat. She described how she wanted to find a way out of the terrible prison she'd found her body to be, how Dr. Kavorkin, who she'd first seen on Donohue, seemed to be a godsend.

She described how when she asked for his suicide services, he'd encouraged her not to take the ultimate step right away, but to seek further help. How he talked her into getting physical therapy and psychiatric counseling, options her own doctor had never suggested, then more details come out, like how relieved she had been, that at last she'd found a doctor she could talk to, how she'd called him up a half a dozen times just to talk, how he'd given her the strength to try those alternatives because she knew he would be there to help her if they didn't work, And how bitterly disappointed she had been when after therapy and counting failed to alleviate her suffering and she renewed her request for the doctor services she found out I was

too late. The preliminary injunction against him denied her his help. I should have ended my life myself. She said angrily toward the close of her testimony. Instead of waiting to where I can't do anything on my own, I can't get pills now. I can't get to them. I can't get a gun, and how do you ask somebody to end your life? The prosecutor says Dr. Kavorkin is a threat to you, Fager said, that he'll talk you into suicide. I'm the one who is making the decision. She said, painfully struggling

to talk through paralyzed vocal muscles, nobody else, and I want that right. I mean, look at me. I want the right to die die and I want the right to have help. The defense arrested after the testimony of Virginia Bernero, mother of the late Victor Bernero, who died of AIDS a year earlier. She described her son's final days, how he sank into dementia, how the medical community made promises

but didn't help them much. She talked about how she couldn't afford nursing care, how her son had begged to be strapped to his bed in a stray jacket, because he was hearing voices that told him to get a knife. She told the court how one night he was expelled from a nursing home, because they couldn't handle him.

How crazed with fear, he was handcuffed, shoved into the back of a police car, locked away in a crisis center cell. Then she wasn't allowed to see him for days until he was transferred to a hospital psychiatric ward. When she came to get Victor, she said he was totally dehydrated, his lips were bleeding like an animal. It was then that he begged to die. He was frightened of death and told me I want to go now. Please give me the whole bottle of pills. I couldn't give it to him. Simply because I didn't think he would kill him. Mrs. Bernero said, I didn't have the heart. I thought I would make him more ill.

The prosecution out a tricky role to play. They needed to prove despite everyone saying that Dr. K was a nice man and a good doctor who was helping that he was doing that What he was doing was building that slippery slope that led to a eugenics plant to do so the prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of three nationally known medical ethicists Dr. Nancy Dickey former chairwoman on the AMA's Council on ethical and judicial affairs Arthur Kaplan director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota Dr. Leon Cass senior scholar at the University of Chicago Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. It was Cass's testimony that was the most powerful and thought provoking. Cass was candid enough to admit on the stand that he had to wrestle with the doctor-assisted

suicide question in the case of his own mother. In her terminal decline, he said his mother had begged him several times to help her die. He repeatedly turned down his own mother's anguish, please, for relief. Cass said a decision he claimed was vindicated when she came down with pneumonia. And he asked her if she wanted to be taken to the hospital to have it treated. And she said, yes, she wanted treatment. The goal of causing death goes beyond the role of accepted medical practice. Cass told the court, the separation between healing and killing is at the very heart of what makes doctors part of a moral profession. Not a set of hired syringes. Breaching that separation

can lead to terrible consequences. He argued that trust would be fatally undermined if a patient knew that a doctor who came to heal him might also consider the option of killing him. Dr. Cass also delivered a powerful argument against giving doctors what he called a license to kill by assisting suicides. He described conversation on the subject he had with a colleague who for years worked in a hospice. The hospice doctor told Cass that the truly disturbing consequence of legitimizing doctor assisted suicide would be that in practice no matter how many safeguards were set up, the individuals who would make up a disproportionate number of doctor sanctioned suicides would

be troublesome patients with no families, the lonely and the friendless, the indigent, the uninsured who seemed to have lives not worth living. You know, not his words, but what people's some, people's opinions he's assuming. This would be the ones who would be pushed into ending it by doctors who overtly or subtly communicated to them that they were better off dead. That particularly in an age of pressure for medical economic triage,

where shrinking funds have to be appropriated between the living and the dying, the consent of the debilitated and weak in an age of pressure for medical economic triage, where shrinking funds have to be appropriated between the living and the dying, the consent of the debilitated and weak and the poor might be subtly manipulated and misconstrued. The poor in-state support institutions with minimal care to begin with would make up the greater share of those who chose to die that way. And this whole argument is, of course, speculative, but I think it's very interesting food for thought. Not something I would have considered on my own, and not something I think would happen, hasn't happened in the Netherlands, but feels unfair not to include it today.

Well, the argument worked on February 5th, the judge in the Kavorkin case issued a ruling against the doctor making the temporary injunction permanent. He was now officially barred from using his machine in Michigan and permanently enjoying from employing any device to assist a person in committing suicide. Nonetheless, the court did release his machine back to him. His attorney began to appeal to ruling. The injunction would not get Dr. Death to stop October 23rd 1991. Kavorkin is attending physician at the deaths of Marjorie Wants, 58-year-old woman from

SOTUS Michigan, who suffered from pelvic pain, Sherry Miller, 43-year-old woman from Roseville, Michigan, who suffered from MS, both deaths occurred at a random state park cabin near Lake Orion, Michigan. Following the two deaths, Michigan judge issues an injunction barring Kavorkin's use of a new machine called a Mediside Machine. November of 1991, Kavorkin's Michigan Medical License is revoked now by the state board of medicine. Then, when a medical examiner ruled that the deaths of Marjorie Wands and Sherry Miller were homicides, Kavorkin charged in February 1992 with two counts of murder, one count

of illegally providing the controlled substance. While on bail awaiting his trial, Kavorkin frequently contacted by more terminal ill, members of their families asked him for help. To ensure the comfort of those he assisted and to protect himself against further criminal charges, he begins requiring documentation of a person's wish to die. Family physicians, mental health professionals, social workers, religious leaders are consulted. His patients have at least a month to consider their decision and possibly change their minds. Kavorkin's sister Margaret videotaped his consultations with Mediside families.

He also speaks on the phone and corresponds with the California dentist who seeks assistance in constructing a Mediside machine to end his life. Oakland County Circuit Court Judge David Brecht dismisses charges against the working in the deaths of Miller and Wants July 21st 1992, but Oakland County County prosecutor Richard Thompson appeals the decision. September 22nd 1992. Lois Haas 52, a worn Michigan woman with lung and brain cancer, dies from carbon monoxide poisoning at the home of Kavorkin's assistant Neil Nichol and Waterford Township,

Michigan. Remember, Neil? He was only available to assist in this suicide because it wasn't his week to care for his butt baby Emily. He fought for custody after giving her for adoption and won joint custody with Blunt's adoptive parents. Good for him. November 23rd, 1992, Catherine Andrief of Moon Township, Pennsylvania dies in

Neal's home. 45 and has cancer. Hers is the first of 10 deaths, Kavorkin attends over the next three months, all die from inhaling carbon monoxide. December 3rd, 1992, the state of Michigan passes the bills outline, outline, assisted suicide to take effect March 30th, 93. But Kavorkin would get in another one under the wire. February 15th, 93 Kavorkin helps Hugh Gale, 73 year old man with infosima and congestive heart disease, die of carbon monoxide poisoning and Hughes Roseville Michigan home or dioxide. Excuse me.

Prosecutors later discovered papers that showed Kavorkin altered his account of Gale's death, deleting a reference to a request by Gail to halt the procedure. According to a ruft raft of report drawn up by Kavorkin, 70-year-old Hugh twice asked Kavorkin to remove a mask that was connected to deadly carbon monoxide gas. So sorry, monoxide dioxide once, mistakenly. Please say Kavorkin removed the mask the first time it failed to take it off the second time. However, Kavorkin's attorney, Jeffrey Feiger, denied that Gail changed his mind, said that a document obtained by police from a right to life group was a rough draft contained an error corrected by Dr.

Kaye. Gail's wife Cheryl, who attended his death, also disputed the account. As she said, he only asked once to have the mass removed, and then it was. February 25, 1993, Michigan Governor John Angler, signs legislation banning assisted suicide. It makes 18 and a suicide a four-year felony, but allows a law to expire after a blue ribbon commission study if they find evidence, you know, that this is not the recall. April 27, 93, a California judge suspends Kavorkin's medical license

after a request from that state's medical board, but he still won't stop. August 9, 1993, Thomas Hyde, 30-year-old Novi Michigan man with ALS, found dead in Kavorkin's van on Bel Isle, a Detroit park. Month later, September 9, hours after a judge ordered Kavorkin to stand trial and hide his death, Kavorkin, present at the death of cancer patient, Donald O'Keefe, 73, and read for township Michigan.

Jailed into Detroit after refusing to post $20,000 bond in the case involving Thomas's death, Kavorkin fasts from 5th to the 8th before being released. In October of 93, Kavorkin charged in the death of 70-year-old Marion Frederick of Ann Arbor Michigan, also suffered from ALS. Dr. K held an Oakland County jail for refusing to post $50,000 bond. Kavorkin then begins another fast from November 29th to December 17th. Leaves jail after an Oakland County Circuit Court judge reduces his bond to a hundred bucks in exchange for Kavorkin's vow not to assist more suicides.

Uh, another big trial of Kavorkin's begins in Pontiac, April, 1994. The prosecution charges him with murder by administrating drugs to Thomas Hyde. Uh, the trial, administering. The trial was presided over by Judge Thomas Jackson, Richard Thompson led led the prosecution, Kovorkin represented again by Jeffrey Figer. And Figer helped Kovorkin escape conviction by successfully arguing that no one, literally no one knew where the fuck my dad was when Thomas Hyde died. How many people did he kill before dad watch finally started keeping tabs on the sick, deranged killer, right?

How many other dads were fucking killing? No, sorry. Figure helped to come work in escape conviction by successfully arguing that a person may not be found guilty of criminally assisting a suicide if they administered medication with the intent to relieve pain and suffering. Even if that disease did increase the risk of death. Jerry Fines Kavorkin guilty of violating the Michigan law that prohibited assisted suicide in the case of

hide, but not guilty of murder on May 2nd 1994. Eight days later May 10th, the Michigan Court of Appeals declares that the state's 1993 ban on assisted suicide was enacted unlawfully, so Jack doesn't get in any trouble. Goes back to assisting suicides now. November 26, 94 hours after Michigan's ban on assisted suicide expires, 72-year-old Margaret Garris dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in her home in Royal Oak. She had arthritis, osteoporosis, complained to being in constant debilitating,

in curable pain. Kavorki not present when police arrive. December 13th, state legislature failed to reach agreement on a bill that would make the ban on assisted suicide indefinitely. Same day, Michigan Supreme Court rules that assisting in suicide while not specifically prohibited was a common law felony, and that there was no protected right to suicide assistance under the state constitution. This ruling reinstate cases against Kavorkian, right?

It was now busy with new ventures. He deals a lot of shit. Kavorkin tries to open it in a medicine clinic in Springfield Township, Michigan, June 26, 95. Names the clinic after a sister Margaret who died in 1994. Kavorkin referred to a physician assisted suicide by Euthanasia as a medicine, right?

The people he assisted were consulting patients or medicine patients. He reason that his role was of a consulting doctor or that his role was, yeah, as a consulting doctor because he did not provide treatment as he would a traditional doctor by helping patients overcome or control a disease in order to live. The first and only metaside clinic patient was 60-year-old Kansas City, Missouri woman, Erica Garcilano, who had ALS, which a few days later, the clinic is evicted by the buildings new, by the buildings owner when they find out what the fuck's going on there.

So, December 14, 1995, Kavorkin arrives at the Oakland County Courthouse, Pontiac, Michigan, in homemade stocks with the ball and chain. One of them makes a show out of another trial, mock how pure, tanical and antiquated the charges against him were. He's ordered to stand trial for assisting the 91 suicides of Sherry Miller and Marjorie Wants. October 30th, group of doctors, other medical experts of Michigan announced

their support of Kavorkin, saying they would set up, you know, a drop of set of principles for the merciful, dignified, medically assisted termination of life, interesting turn of events. February 1st, 96, New England Journal of Medicine publishes results of a massive study of physicians attitudes towards doctor assisted suicide. The study demonstrated that a large number of physicians surveyed supported doctor assisted suicide under some conditions.

Of course, Oregon had been the first aid to legalize it. When voters passed a restricted death with dignity act in October of 94, it will be enacted in a few years. Another murder trial for Kavorkin begins February 20th, 96 in Pontiac, Michigan. Now charged in the deaths of Marion Frederick and Dr. Ali Kallili, or Kallili, excuse me, 61 of Oakbrook, Illinois, who suffered from bone cancer, who died in November of 1993. Both deaths occurred in Kavorkin's apartment. The trial is assigned to Judge David Breck once again, Richard Thompson leads the prosecution, once again, Fager leads the defense. Thompson argues that Kavorkin had acted recklessly, failed to discuss other options with the deceased

family physicians, deceased family physicians, Fredrick's and Kallili's family members, though, testify for the defense by expressing appreciation that Kavorkin ended their loved ones suffering. So take that. All this case is being decided. It seems like maybe the National Tide turn in the favor of Kavorkin. May 6, 1996, the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that mentally competent, terminally ill adults have a constitutional right

to aid and dine from doctors, health care workers and family members. First time in US, federal appeals, court history that they'd endorsed assisted suicide. Then on March 8, 1996, the jury acquits Kavorkin. He spent an awful lot of time in court, but he is winning. Uh, but more trials, government interference is coming. March 20th, 96 Michigan representative Dave camp introduces the bill in the US house

to prohibit taxpayer funding of assistant suicide. Yet another, uh, trial began almost immediately after Kavorkin's second acquittal, April 16th, 1996, now charged in assisting the deaths of Marjorie Wands, Sherry Miller, way back in 1991, fucking Michigan, really had a hard on for this guy. They really just can't fucking stop trying to nail him. The prosecution challenges Kavorkin's judgment when he determined whether Marjorie Wands was mentally competent to make the decision to end her own life as three psychiatrists had diagnosed her as mentally ill, recommended she received counseling.

Kavorkin faces a maximum of five years, $10,000 fine is convicted. And he would make quite a show with his trial. He's an old pro with his witch trials now. His winning streak is making him cocky. For the start of the trial, he wears a colonial costume, wears tights, a white powdered wig, big buckle shoes, right, protesting how this shit is, you know, fucking like, this trial was fell under centuries old common law. Once again, Dr. K is acquitted by the jury May 14, 96. He's undefeated against substantial

criminal charges. Then on November 4, 96, Kavorkins lawyer announces a previously unreported assistance suicide of a 50 year old woman bringing the official total number of his assistance to his sides since 1990 to 46. Ioni, Ionia County Circuit Judge Charles Meal declares a mistrial in another Dr. Kavorkin assisted suicide trial. June 12, 1997, at case later dropped. June 6, 97, the US Supreme Court rules unanimously, the state governments have the right to outlaw Dr. assisted suicide. Oregon, then in acts the death with dignity act in October 27th 1997.

So much stuff happening March 14th 1998. Mark's Kavorkins 100th Assisted Suicide involving a 66 year old Detroit man between September and October of 98 the Michigan legislature enacts another law. This one making Assisted Suicide a felony punishable by a maximum five year prison sentence. They also close a loophole that allowed for Kavorkin's previous acquittals. They're so against what he's doing, right? He can't quit and neither apparently can they. November 22, 1998, 60 minutes at CBS show, airs a video recording of the leads injection

administered by Dr. Kavorkin to Thomas Yauk, 52, an ALS patient who had requested Kavorkin's help. On the recording, Kavorkin seen actively helping Yauk administer the drugs. This is significant, because he had reported earlier that all the medicine patients had, they completed the process themselves, that they pushed the final syringe, the final button, whatever.

This difference will fuck him. Well, that in publicizing what he did in the biggest way possible the time. He allows the tape to be aired on 60 minutes. Host Mike Wallace asks him a series of questions. You were engaged in a political medical macabre publicity venture, right? Probably. And in watching these tapes, I get to feel there's something almost ghoulish in your desire to see the deed done. Well, that could be. It doesn't come across very likable here.

November 25, 1998, Michigan now charges of working with first degree with murder, violating the assisted suicide law, delivering a controlled substance without a license in the death of Yauk. Prosecutors later dropped a suicide charge. I think initially they declared a first degree murder. They dropped into second degree murder. Kavorkin makes the mistakes of deciding to defend himself from the trial, threatens to starve himself if he sent to jail, shouldn't have defended himself. He's confrontational, self-righteous, not the skilled defense attorney, Fygaris. I think that Dr. Kavorkin's main fault

was being a lot smarter than just about everyone else around him, especially smarter than his most strident critics, judges, and prosecutors, and he knew he was smarter, and he let them know that, and that tactic does not often work out well. March 26, 1999, a jury in Oakland County, Michigan, convicts, caivoric, you know, second degree murder and the illegal delivery of a controlled substance. An April judge, Jessica, our Cooper sentence, attempted 10 to 25

years in prison with a possibility of parole. She would say, this is a court of law. And you said you invited yourself here to take you final stand, but this trial was not an opportunity for a referendum. The law prohibiting euthanasia was specifically reviewed and clarified by the Michigan Supreme Court several years ago in a decision involving your very own cases, sir. So the charge here should come as no surprise to you. You invited yourself to the wrong forum. Well, we are a nation of laws and we are a nation that tolerates differences of opinion because we have a civilized and a nonviolent way of resolving our conflicts that ways the law and adheres to the law. We have the means and the methods to protest the laws with which we disagree. You can criticize the law, you can write or lecture about the law, you can speak to the

media or partition the voters. But you can't break out that consequences. Kavorkin sent a prison in Coldwater, Michigan to serve a sentence during the next three years. Kavorkin unsuccessfully attempts to pursue the conviction in appeals court. Lawyers representing Kavorkin seek to bring the case before the US Supreme Court, but that request declined. Walden prison. Kavorkin refuses to let his imprisonment break him.

Keeps his mind very active, continues to write. He prepares essays at a company art, music, photography, photographs, books, poetry, all included in an exhibit title, The Doctor is in, The Art of Dr. Jack Kavorkin, opens in September 1999 at the Armenian Library and Museum of America and Watertown, Massachusetts. April 2000, Wall in Prison, Kavorkin receives the Glitzman Citizen Activist of the Year Award, and a sculpture designed by Maya Lynn, creator of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. 2002, Kavorkin participates through written questions in a program on death and dying at

Oklahoma City University. Same year, Kavorkin, Wall Street, and prison, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Stay's busy in prison, August 2003 is called to give deposition as an expert witness on medical research on the effect of mercury on human tissue based on early writings on the subject, prepares articles for the New York Times, the William Sapphire column on language, Forbes, popular mechanics, New York review of books, the nation, American Journal of Forensics, psychiatry, on and on. For prison in 2004, he writes, look at the forces against me, the government, and the United States. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work.

I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work.

I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work.

I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of work. I think it's a lot of for organ trafficking, even bought a domain viscous.org wrote books, uh, glimmer IQs and anthology on previous research, a new material on philosophy, medicine, mathematics, religion, history, etc. uh, wrote amendment nine, our cornucopia of rights in 2005, a book on the subject of the US Bill of Rights. And in 2007, Kavorkin started working on dear Dr. Jack, using selected letters out of the thousands written to him by supporters during his incarceration.

In an M.S. NBC interview, aired on September 29th, 2005, Kavorkin said that if he were granted parole, he would not resume directly helping people die. And would restrict himself to campaigning to have the laws changed. He wants out, but not yet. December 22nd, 2005, Kavorkin denied parole. But then year and a half later, after eight years in prison, June 1, 2007,

he is paroled for good behavior, released from the Lakeland correctional facility. He's paroled for, to be on parole for two years under conditions. He not assists anyone else in dying or provide care for anyone older than 62 or disabled. Keep him away from Nanna! He'll push a pill down in a face. First chance he gets. He's bloodthirsty, Jesus. Jack also forbidden by the rules of his parole from even commenting about assisted suicide for two years. Kavorkin said he would abstain from assisting any more terminal patients with metaside. He would restrict his role to persuading states to change laws on assisted suicide. By this time Kavorkin himself not doing doing well, suffering from liver damage due to advanced

hepatitis C, right, that disease he gave himself decades earlier with that corp's blood. Despite not feeling too well 2008, the age of 79, Kivorki decides to run as an independent candidate for the U.S. Congress against Republican Joe Crawlenberg or grow, not get it, Joe Nalenberg and Democratic Gary Peters, he gets less than 3% of the vote. or not grow fadgett joe nolan berg and democratic gary pierce uh... gets less than three percent of the vote again despite numerous legal victories for the common man not a likeable guy not gonna get many religious votes especially also in two thousand eight

he begins working on another book when the people bubble pops about the dangers of overpopulation uh... i wonder what he would have thought of the purge movies. 2009, Kavorkian lecture to more than 5,000 students at the University of Florida, Wayne State University, many other colleges. Following year, he writes on the subject of the 9th Amendment in the form of a bill of rights of natural rights. 9th Amendment summarized states that the federal government doesn't own the rights that are not listed in the Constitution, but instead they belong to us, the citizens.

This means that the rights that are specified in the Constitution are not the only ones people should be limited to. They also prepared another anthology of its early research. Spokes, the Armenian Association, UCLA, met with the executive team of the HBO film, you don't know Jack. Production began in 2005, while Kavorkin was still in prison. The film, as I mentioned, features Al Pacino, Jack Ovarian, Brand of Focaro, Margaret Janice, Susan Saranas, Janet Good, Danny Houston, Jeffrey Figer, and John Goodman, as Neil Nichol. Looks like it was a good movie, 83% favorable ratings for both critics and the public on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was released April 24, 2010, nominated for 15 Emmys, one, two, Al Pacino, one prime primetime Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Awards for his

performance as Kavorkin. And Kavorkin would attend the 2010 Emmy Awards in LA where Pacino would ask him to stand before the world. Then a little over a year later, Kavorkin dies Friday, June 3, 2011 at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. With him, we're Emily Blunt, several other butt babies, like Cory Feldman and Tom Cruise. Come on.

No, with him, we're as niece, Ava Janis, as attorney and friend, Meyer Morgan Roth. Kavorkin was 83. His old attorney, Mr. Figer, said that Dr. Kavorkin weakened as he lay in the hospital, could not take advantage of the option that he'd offered others and that he had wished for himself. This is something I would want. Kavorken said, if he had enough strength to do something about it, he would have. Mr. Figer said at a news conference in Southfield, Michigan, had he been able to go home, Jack Kavorken probably would have not allowed himself to go back to the hospital.

Kavorken was buried in White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery, Toy Michigan. The epitaph on his tombstone reads, he sacrificed himself for everyone's rights. Now let's hop out of that big old timeline. Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. Dr. Jack Kavorkin, Dr. Death, very interesting guy. Man of convictions, principles, you might not agree with his convictions and principles,

but he sure as shit did not back down when it came to what he believed in, and I do admire that. So was he, as I asked at the start of the episode, a good guy? I think he was, but also just a real, unlikable guy to many, right? He could have definitely worked harder to make his pills easier to swallow. He equated anyone disagreeing with him to persecution. He openly disabaid the law. He didn't use the channels open to every U.S. citizen to create lasting change in the system, voting, organizing. Instead, for many years, he went loan rogue wolf. Right. I think there's some merit to the criticisms

of his detractors. What if something had gone seriously wrong with some of his assistance to a size? What if he'd hurt someone for life, made their bad life circumstances they wanted to escape from worse. Dr. Kavorkin was running an operation with zero oversight and with zero oversight mistakes are bound to happen. The death of Janet Atkins was almost botched several times before she died. Also, was his primary goal to create change or was it to become infamous? With him, hard to tell sometimes. Jeffrey Figer, Kavorkin's lawyer, you know, during the 90s, excuse me, gave a speech at a press conference

in which he stated, Dr. Jack didn't seek out history, but he made history, but is that true? Didn't he seek out history? Didn't he want to be the face of the physician-assisted suicide movement? 2005 or 2015 retro report story about Kavorkin's legacy and the right to die movement may have gotten the best when they said that Kavorkin got a national debate going which I think he then helped stifle by his own outrageous actions. Yeah, I agree. His inflammatory behavior might have hurt his cause more than helped it, but he did get people talking and there's a lot of merit in that.

You know, he got me to think about death more than I would have without him. And at the end of the soul, you know, what do you think? Should you have the right to die, how you want? I think you should. And if you've listened to the show for any length of time, you know that I'm not pro suicide. I am pro keep fighting. I'm pro. Try your damage to find something to live for. But if you're in

pain, chronic relentless pain, if your body and or mind are deteriorating and there is nothing you can do to stop it. If what makes you you just keep slipping away day after day and you want to leave the party before the cake runs dry so to speak and all the funds over, why the fuck should I try and stop you? Why should anyone? It feels so cruel and selfish to me. Only you know how much pain you can handle. Only you walk in your shoes. What if you've tried counting?

You visited specialists and the prognosis is still just fucking grim and you don't want to fight for every extra day or hour so you can still keep breathing while in so much pain, mounting pain, while the mind and or body is degrading. In cases like that, I firmly believe you should be able to end your days. That is a freedom I support 100% to me.

It feels indecent not to it. It feels inhuman. And that is why I think Dr. Death was a good guy. He fought for what I think is an important freedom. And really at the end of the day, he wasn't pro-death. Like he said, he was pro-life, you know, part of living is dying. And just like I want to have the most freedoms I can while I'm alive, looking at you outdated, you're not my fucking mom, Uncle Sam Drugglas, I also want to have the most freedom possible when

it comes to how I die. Death. Never thought of it as a tricky subject before, but I guess it is. From the early history of ancestor worship and skull cults, to covering mirrors when someone dies to the modern funeral industry, we humans have tried for so long to get death right. To do the thing that makes sense is a species to honor the part of the person that still lives in us and to ensure our own continuity as the one still living. It's an incredibly hard thing to do. Dr. K tried to give us more control and perhaps a greater sense of dignity when it comes to our deaths.

And for that, I applaud his efforts. Now let's look today's top five takeaways. Time, suck, top five takeaways. Number one, according to his lawyer, Jeffrey Fager, Kavorkin assisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill people between 1990 and 1998. He used his sanatron or death machine to allow patients to deliver lethal injections to themselves. Number two, Jack of Orkin was convicted of second-degree murder of Thomas Yoke. On March 26, 1999, ultimately served eight years in prison, released in 2007. Partly because he was suffering from advanced liver failure as a result of hepatitis C,

an infection he had gotten years earlier. Speaking of number three, Kavorkin's strange and bizarre experiments started long before he began experimenting, experimenting with the Thanatron. In the 70s, he experimented with infusing blood from corpses into living human beings, giving himself hep C in the process. He took close-up photographs of terminally ill patients. I'm sorry, I'm dead patients. Recently deceased patients trying to pinpoint the moment

of death. He even once requested a fetus to implant in his male lab partner stomach, a request that was not allowed. Maybe you should have requested the fetus to be implanted a little lower than the stomach. In the colon, come on, baby, let's make some monsters. Somebody figured out. Number four, we meet sex of long struggle, with how to deal with how much control we should have over our own deaths.

Youth in Asia has been thought of sometimes as incredibly humane, other times as the moral equivalent of the Nazis eugenics program. Number five, new info, are you ready for some weird death facts? When air and gas leave in a corpse, or left in a corpse, start to escape to the throat and nose, they they can make the vocal cords vibrate resulting in a noise it sounds like a groan. Can you imagine working in a funeral home and hearing that for the first time? Also didn't know this either after you die your eyeballs flattened. One more

tissue compared this flattening of the eyeball to that of an old grape that looks to flate it. To keep eyes looking plump, during funeral services, eye caps are often placed under the eyelids to recreate the shape the eyeballs had during life. Jesus. Speaking of mortations, the term mortician was invented as part of a PR campaign by the funeral industry, which felt it was more customer friendly than undertaker.

The term was chosen after a call for ideas in embalmers monthly. Wonder what terms came in second and third place? Maybe a cadaver-grabber? Or how about a carcass artist? That's the one. That's the one I wish would have won. Carcass artist has a nice little flow to it.

Let's get out of here. Time shut. Top five takeaways. The Dr. Deaths, Jack of Orkin, and the right to die debate has been sucked. You long think about butt babies, totally unnecessary, but I enjoy it in this episode. You long think about Ghost stick as well. Thanks to the Bad Magic Productions team, thanks to Queen of Bad Magic Lindsey Cummins, to the Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley for production, thanks toiddelexter for upkeep on the Time Suck app, Logan the Art Warlock Keith creating the merch badmaticmerch.com for running

socials with Lizzy and Chantris Hernandez, thanks to the All-See and Eyes moderating the cult and curious private Facebook page and to beefstake and his mod squad running discord. Next week we return to True Crime to some serial killer with a story of Robert Yates, a serial killer who was active about 30 minutes from where I record every week in Spokane, Washington. And he was active when I was going to school at Spokane at a at Kentucky University. Before he was caught a few, my friends actually thought they partied with him one night after some drinks at the chef. A bar that no longer exists. I thought they did too for a bit. He was killing women just a mile or two from campus. We talked

about him a lot. We were shocked at who he was when he was caught. Murderly 11 women in Spokane, then confessed to two murders committed in Walla Walla and to the murders of another three women in Western Washington. At least 16 women dided his hands all between 1975 and 1998. He was caught in 2000.

He was living quite the double life before he got caught. When he wasn't targeting sex workers, he appeared to be to his friends and neighbors, a great family guy. Devoted husband, loving father of four daughters and a son, with his second wife, Linda. He was a veteran who served 21 and a half years in military. And he might have killed, probably would have killed, for even longer than he did, if one of his would-be victims hadn't finally lived to report him, just barely after being shot and beaten. A killer roamed the same streets I did in the mid 90s.

A dude, I might have bumped into at the grocery store, and we will talk about him next week, here on TimeSuck. Right now, let's head on over to this week's TimeSucker updates. Updates, get your time sucker updates. First up, a little sex alien love, on last week suck on realism from sexy alien lover Tony Mont-Fonat Tony man Fattano Hello, Dan first-time writer Sucker chiming in from Nashville Tony writes I found your show years ago to the Tom and Dan podcast love Tom and Dan Media time my wife and I saw you in Nashville a few years ago

at the last show before COVID shut everything down. I'll be come back. I will in the fall actually. And regard to the realism suck in no way whatsoever am I sticking out for this guy's ramp and douche baggery, but I know you always take caution to look at things from all angles. So to play devil's advocate, if he did catch a glimpse

of heaven or was visited by some alien race, it would make sense that all those entities would be beautiful. If it was angels, they would all be divinely attractive, made in God's image, given God is not some nerd in his mouth's basement who figured out world building. Maybe. And if it was an alien race who figured out cloning, it would stand to reason they would clone the most beautiful people. Now imagine seeing that to the eyes of a petally horny human man. This of course does not excuse any of the more untoward facets of his religion. Sexual liberation and equality for all sexual proclivities is not a bad thing as long as those principles transfer to all other aspects of the human experience, which obviously did not for him

as a example by the fact that it only benefited his desires. If you took all the self-serving out of his beliefs and spread the ideals to other areas like race relations, interpersonal relationships, and work-life balance wouldn't be all that bad. Anyway, just the thoughts of a lowly space lizard, keep on sucking, Tony. Well, thank you, Tony. Uh, yeah, man. Uh, I mean, the ideals of this utopia, he imagined, yeah, fucking great. I would love a world where we are all super attractive and we get to come all the time. Don't have to work too much.

Uh, you know, cause robots are doing the work and we're not burdened with jealousy and other negative aspects of the human condition. Certain aspects of what he, you know, plagiarized from ancient alien authors, fuck, sound fucking fantastic, you know, and, you know, maybe could have happened. I can't prove any of this stuff, you know, didn't happen. I just don't think old Claude saw the shit he claimed, as I doubt you do either. But yeah, a world of immortality through being able to slip into some new meat sack body when yours runs down a world with a machine in every home that makes, excuse me, every kind of food imaginable, every body for sexual fulfillment. Well, he'll lose a phenosimia up. All right, now how about a little inspiration? Super sack, John

Huff is back. He writes, greetings time suck team. First off, I just want to say I started listening to the show during the two part episode on JFK. I've been hooked ever since. back. He writes, greetings time suck team. First off, I just want to say I started listening to the show during the two part episode on JFK. I've been hooked ever since. Thank you. Prove to be an excellent escape from my dead and job at the time. Show got me through my divorce, some of the darkest times of my life. Unfortunately, along the way, I made a mess of my life in ways that I still, uh, still wake me up at night. I developed a love and later a need for alcohol. For a while, it became my personality. Wasn't until I heard one of your year end wrap-ups

that I became inspired to take a chance on me. Fast forward to today, I'm two years into an apprenticeship program in the same trade and a year clean and sober upon riding this. Fuck yeah. I discovered the show was edutainment pretty quickly, which I didn't count on. Or what I didn't count on was that it would soon change

me in the best ways. The show challenged my beliefs and morals for the better. Also gave me hope to know that there's people out there that are just as curious and weird as I am. Again, thank you for all you guys do. Hail, Nimrod. Well, nice work. You fellow fucking weirdo.

Go get some of that ghost plus. Treat yourself. No, good job taking a chance of yourself. Hail Nimrod. You know, best bet you can make is on yourself. Never gonna have as much control over the outcome as you do on that investment and any other investment. So fuck yeah, I love hearing what you've done and now you're gonna be inspiring other people. Keep crushing,

John. I inspire you. You inspire me and others right back. We just keep the circle going. Thank you. Quick, funny, Betty White related message from Betty White Power fan. JK, come on. Brett Davis. Brett writes, I love that Brett writes, I guess Brett and Betty don't write. What am I talking about? Hey, Master Sucker. Brett from Michigan here. Fairly new listener, but loving every episode

I've listened to so far. Keep listening, though, probably if you don't. I discovered time suck by accident when I couldn't sleep and decided that a podcast would help put me to sleep. Silly me, the episode was on the next, him cult, and I had the opposite effects, and I ended up pulling it all nighter.

Sweet. Just finished the Betty White episode, and she truly is a legend. I found this meme that I've attached to this email. It is something I'll remember about Betty White at the end of from the end of 2021. Hale Nimmeron, prose, but praiseable jangles. Bread Davis.

Yeah, this meme is, you know, pick a Betty, put kind of pull her sunglasses down. And in this caption, I love this, Betty White didn't die. No, no, no. She grabbed 2021 by the throat and whispered in its ear. I'm taking you with me, you son of a bitch, and then she threw them both into the fires of Mordor to save us all. That's my story.

I'm sticking to it. It is canon. Deal with it. Yes. Love it. Love Betty White. Thank you, Brett. Everyone's getting drilled. All holes must be filled. Classic Betty. And now one last one relating to some what we talked

about the 2017 Las Vegas shooting suck a few weeks back. Stand up, sack, Nick, where you'll rights six March year of our Lord 2022. There is Daniel keeper, both jangles and gesture of Lucifina. It has been a fortnight since our last frolic and my bosom yearns for you. Fuck it. I can't do an entire message like that. I'm not creative enough. That was good. That's good. Nick, let me go ahead and apologize in advance for the length of this email as I don't know how long this will take. I'm writing in to provide a little info on why some of these conspiracy theorists jack off so hard to the sandy hook shooting.

Given my current geographic positioning, there's quite a few truth errs in area and most of them makes second amendment loving, the whole bill of rights, really. Right of center leaning, it doesn't mean I'm right wing and I hate all other political ideals. I hate many right wing ideas too, Lucifina, I hate having to qualify every Sabinau. Meet sex like myself who want to waterboard them with gasoline. Now that all that's out of the way, I know Alex Jones, true through great guy, smart guy, but makes me want to bashboard them with gasoline? Now that all that's out of the way I know and Alex Jones true through great guy smart guy But makes me want to bash myself in the head with my 32 ounce ball pin hammer until I'm deaf when he goes on a rant about some deep-state bullshit He dove heavy into the conspiracy theory pool started spouting off about all kinds of batshit theories at one point I'd for sheer force of will and grinding me down

He had me watching info wars episode with him. I lasted about three minutes before standing and saying, this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. How can you watch this? He supports none of his claims with any actual evidence. I'm a moron and I can see that. His only real response is that you can argue with is the government is scrubbing all the answers. A perfect answer because you can never prove one way

or the other that they are or are not doing that. It's as beautiful as it is simple and stupid. Now I say all that to our now I say all that to tell you this next part shortly after the attempted truth versus indoctrination the events at Sandy Hook unfolded and did the truth start flying my way about what really happened as we know December 14 2012 some asshole alleged pedophile douchebag, fuck nut. Shot up Sandy Hook Elementary. Shortly after the fiscal year ends, keep that in mind. Soon after the shooting, I started to hear about all the deep state and they're covered up on testing and blah, blah, blah.

I continued to demand actual evidence until one day I get a photo of what looks like a just right enough FBI report that shows Newton Connecticut is having zero deaths in 2012. Perplexing and tell you think about the fact that this came out right after Sandy Hook. I've never seen the government organize a report so quickly. I said, maybe they're working out the fiscal calendar, like most governments do. I don't hear from this man for months. I tried to locate this document to send it along, but could find no evidence it exists outside of a dead link to it on Alex Jones website. Deep State cover up or some bullshit he was court

ordered to remove. Who knows, maybe someone with stronger GoogleFood can locate it, but I feel like shit, like this document, combined with the man in the verge of a psychotic break, does the same amount of damage as most cold leaders. Yeah, more, maybe, probably more. Now some things about this whole situation, you spoke about wanting answers and closure to situations like this, and the biggest shooting. Am I opinion these guys are assholes, plain and simple? Is there oftentimes underlying mental health

issues that can cause chain reactions to form events like this? Is that the only to be the only option of someone's mind? Absolutely. But it also seems very insensitive to people with anxiety and OCD, which New York Times would claim as a factor for Adam Landza motive. How many people walk around every day with those issues and don't murder 26 people? I get those varying degrees of severity. Now, I'm not here to argue that. Just simply say, I don't feel like the answer isn't just, he's an asshole most of the time. I also feel like the media tends to glorify the perpetrators of these crimes by showing 24 hours this person's life for the next three weeks in their manifestos. Personally, I feel like we need to glorify the great people who rose

to action during such events. But I also believe in freedom of the press and they're going to do what they're going to do. Also, the weapons used in the shooting belong to Adam's mother, who failed to properly secure them away from a person with an underlying mental disorder. But that never gets talked about. Well, sorry for the long email, but if you can give a shout out to Crisis Actor, in the fake country of Australia, my friend, Gareth Locke, he's dealing with some heavy stuff at the moment, and here I'm from you would like to do him some good. I met him on the OG Times Look Facebook group, and he seems like a great A-Mid sack, even

if he's fake. And one quick topic suggestion. I've suggested it before, but major dick winters and the boys the 506 parachute infantry regiment. More people need to know their stories. And the man's name is major dick winters. Come on.

Thank you, Nick. Great message, man. Yeah, every once in a while, Alex Jones and guys like him do get a hold, maybe if some document that sheds could be something here, light and what they're saying, which is very unfortunate, because then it seems to give credibility. And many people's eyes to all of the other bad shit stuff that they fucking say. And as someone who also likes the second amendment, I hate that there is a crowd in this country that gives

casual and responsible gun owners a terrible name and you're right. They did not talk enough about how, you know, you know, Adam's mom didn't keep her guns properly locked up with your land nightclub shooting. That often is the real problem. Now being responsible, interesting thoughts as well about how about how, you know, we too quickly maybe point to mental health issues with mass shooters. Why can't they just sometimes be fucking assholes? I would love to hear that from more prosecutors. Why did so and so do what they did? Well, because they're fucking asshole. World's always had a lot of them. And sometimes one asshole does something especially ass-holy.

And well, here we are. And Gareth Locke, well, I hope life improves that fake ass nation of Christ's actors that you call home in. I mean, just making it improve, right? You're living a fake life in a fake country. So, you know, just change the video game to your liking. It's gotta be that simple, right? And all seriousness, I hope we get down to Australia

one of these days, and I hope you all are doing well and I'll talk to you next week. I'm gonna be back. I'm gonna be back. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. Thanks again for listening to another

Bad Magic Productions podcast made sex. I know this was a big one, but there was just so much to talk about. I truly hope you don't wanna die. But I'm in favor of you being able to make that call if you want to. But please, explore every other option first, one of those options, you know, to hang around and keep on sucking. I'm magic productions. Hey Joe, do we have any turbans around the office anywhere?

I haven't seen one recent. I can go look. Yeah, I just need a, I need a turbine and some masking tape. I need you to mask all the light switches off in the building. Okay. I'm going to put on the turbine. I'm going to walk around the dark, naked with a building. Okay. I'm gonna put on the turban. I'm gonna walk around in the dark, naked with a boner,

and you know, see how much ghost dick people want. I just think, I think it'll be a fun experiment. Okay, out of all those things, I think we have tape and a boner. Okay, so we don't have the turban. I'll be right back. I'm gonna go look, you can prep up. Okay, I'll get naked, you get the tape,

I'll get the boner. Let's get this fucking ghost dick out there to the people. Come on. is you can prep up. Okay, I'll get naked, you get the tape, I'll get the boner, let's get this fucking ghost dick out there to the people. Come on.