Death As A Salesman: What's Wrong With Assisted Suicide

DEATH AS A SALESMAN

WHATS WRONG WITH ASSISTED SUICIDE

BRIAN P. ]OHNSTON

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Brian P. Johnston

This book is available in print at most online retailers

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Design - Robert Aulicino, Pro-Art Design

Photos: Kevorkian, and his paintings, Frontline, PBS Medicine, CMCD, Inc.

Although the author and publisher have exhaustively researched all sources and made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information contained in this book, we assume no responsibilities for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein. Any slights of people, places, or organizations are unintentional. Readers should immediately consult professionals and seek intervention when dealing with the suicidally depressed or individuals with psychological disorders.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many individuals have contributed to both the content and the tenor of this book, and it would be impossible to name them all. Three, David Osteen, PhD.; Darla St. Martin; and Burke Balch, ].D., were significant in their critical contributions. D.B. Warner, Roxanne Trujillo, Richard White, Mike Spence, and Doug Dwyer were helpful and patient proofreaders. Innumerable others offered passing observations, tattered clippings, and helpful insights, their goal — to help ensure that the susceptible are protected at their moment of greatest danger, when they are without hope and at risk of their very lives. It is my hope that this book contributes to that goal of protecting the vulnerable.

Dedicated to my father, John B. Johnston,

He accomplished many things in his life, yet for him it was important to remember the sick and bring comfort to the afflicted.

PREFACE

There are books already available regarding assisted suicide. Unfortunately, many of them romanticize the practice. A few do bring assisted suicide into question, and these are, by and large, very good books.

This book's purpose is to provide straightforward answers to the question, What’s wrong with assisted suicide? I can assure you that there are many, many answers to that simple question. Unfortunately, those answers are often offered in medical, legal, or technical terms.

It is my hope that the answers in this book are not complicated or technical. (They are provided for those — and there are apparently a few of you — who are not yet bioethicists.) What I have done here is attempt to examine this issue and the emotional issues surrounding it, in a way that the average person would. You see, it is regular people who are being talked into ending their lives. It is normal people who are being asked to discard nearly three thousand years of medical and social ethics; to change the laws that currently protect the ill, the infirm, the depressed, and the disabled. And it is everyday, sensible people who will make a difference in stopping a very aggressive euthanasia movement. They are the ones who, when confronted with decisions, need practical answers to deal with the traumas of life and death.

In these pages you are going to meet Derek Humphry and Jack Kevorkian, two of the better known and more effective salesmen of the assisted suicide movement. We will look at how they use the media, and how at times the approach taken by the media itself has done more to promote assisted suicide than even its advocates.

Sadly, we will see how this sensational approach to reporting about suicide has in fact led to more and more suicides and requests for suicide. This power of suggestion is demonstrated in the suicide clusters that appear wherever a group of people, large or small, accepts suicide as a possible answer to the challenges of the moment.

We will look at the seamier side of what is happening in the Netherlands, and at an official Dutch government report on euthanasia in that country. For history buffs there are separate chapters on medical and social ethics, and for you debaters, a special question and answer section with references back to the text. The pages with gray borders indicate particularly useful information for protecting the vulnerable. I have given special attention to dealing with fear and pain, two of the most emotional and needlessly effective weapons in the euthanist armory.

I hope you find this book useful. In contemplating assisted suicide, society is considering a dramatic departure from the values that teach us to respect and protect the vulnerable and the innocent. But remember that society isn’t government officials; society is really just normal people like you and me. As you evaluate assisted suicide, consider carefully, for lives are at stake. Ultimately, the life you save may even be your own.

Brian P. Johnston

The man who kills a man kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world — G.K. Chesterton

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice, and when it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object, but to escape some ill. — Aristotle

The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today would have wanted to live had he a week. Voltaire

"Guns aren’t lawful

Nooses give

Gas smells awful

You might as well live. "

- Dorothy Parker, Resume

"If you do not know how to die, don’t worry. Nature herself will teach you in the proper time; she will discharge that work for you; don 't trouble yourself." - Michel de Montaigne

"Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment." - Dag Hammarskjold

"Be sure to send a lazy man for the angel of death." - Jewish proverb

"Honor a physician with the honor due unto him." - Ecclesiastics

"I prefer old age to the alternative." - Maurice Chevalier

Old age. It ’s the only disease, Mr. Thompson, you don’t look forward to being cured of - Herman J Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, CITIZEN KANE

Hold back those who are being drawn toward death. Book of Proverbs

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE: DEREK HUMPHRY Death Salesman

CHAPTER TWO: HOSPICE Patient and Family Care-give

CHAPTER THREE: THE PROBLEM OF PAIN Dealing with Pain, Dealing with Fear

CHAPTER FOUR: DOCTOR DEATH Jack Kevorkian

CHAPTER FIVE: DUTCH TREAT What’s Really Happening in the Netherlands

CHAPTER SIX: SOCIETY’S HISTORICAL REJECTION OF SUICIDE AND ASSISTED SUICIDE

CHAPTER SEVEN: EVEN IF ASKED Why Doctors Shouldn’t Kill

CHAPTER EIGHT: TARGET AUDIENCE The Vulnerable, the Depressed, the Despairing

CHAPTER NINE: MANIPULATED SUICIDE Engineering Death

CHAPTER TEN: PROMOTIONAL CONSIDERATION Assisted Suicide – Mass Communications

CHAPTER ELEVEN: ADVANCE DIRECTIVES Protecting the Vulnerable

CHAPTER TWELVE: CIVIL DEFENSE Using the Law to Protect

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

GLOSSARY

RESOURCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE: DEREK HUMPHRY Death Salesman

•The Hemlock Society is the world’s largest, most effective euthanasia advocacy group.

• Hemlock owes its foundation and growth to one man, Derek Humphry.

• Humphry rose to notoriety after the assisted suicide of his first wife, Jean, and the publication of his book, Jean’s Way

• Through Humphry's efforts, the work and message of Hemlock eclipsed the other members of the International Right to Die movement.

• The circumstances surrounding the suicide of Humphry’s second wife, Hemlock co-founder Ann Wickett, cast a shadow over the apparent motives of assisted suicide advocates.

Derek Humphry; Death Salesman

Derek Humphry is a man who, on first meeting, can best be described as intriguing. He speaks in a deep and sonorous British accent. His words are weighted and firm. Though not overbearing, he definitely carries a commanding presence. And his message is clearly one of conviction, for this is one man who has practiced what he's preached.

Humphry was a principal co-founder of the Hemlock Society, the most active and influential euthanasia advocacy group in the United States, if not the world. He is a prolific writer who spent eleven years with the Sunday Times of London, as well as writing for the Daily Mail. Humphry is proud of his work as an advocacy journalist, having focused on cutting- edge issues like "race relations, policing and civil liberties.''¹

But his best—known writings were not to appear in newsprint, though they did employ his creative advocacy skills. His book, Jean’s Way, is the story of how he facilitated the suicide of his wife Jean, and was written in conjunction with his new wife, a young American woman named Ann Wickett.

Humphry was living in England at the time of the death and he was the only witness to the suicide. We readers are left with few options other than to accept his version of events. {Years later his co-author Ann would cast new light on the death of Jean Humphry, and Derek Humphry's methods of comforting his ailing wife would take on a new dimension.)²

In Jean’s Way, Humphry, with Ann's aid, movingly tells the story of Jean Humphry's bout with cancer. The vulnerable Jean, according to a pre-arranged agreement, asked Derek Darling...is this the day?'' As he put it, It was the most awful moment of my life. However, I had to answer, 'Yes, my darling, it is.’" He then prepared a lethal concoction and served it to her. Humphry admits,

I asked myself if I should cross-examine her about the correctness of her part of the decision. However, I resisted this be- cause it was so apparent that she was dependent on me for judgment. To raise any doubts at this point would only muddle the certainty and clarity of our instincts and intelligence. We both knew intuitively that this was the right time. To waver would have been wrong. (Jean ’s Way, p.185 [emphasis this author]

Two things are immediately apparent from Humphry's telling of the story. Derek himself was to decide when Jean would die. It was his decision, not hers. Secondly, according to this description, Jean exhibited a classic psychological condition displayed by the gravely ill: the desire for affirmation, the self-deprecating "cry for help.'' Her needs were clearly of an emotional nature.

The book and tabloid coverage of the ''assisted suicide brought him notoriety in Great Britain which lead to Humphry's questioning by the authorities. In time however, all charges were dropped due to the lack of conclusive evidence. But Humphry had found a new cause to advocate, a cause in which he was now not merely a reporter but an active participant. As the dust-jacket reads on a reprint edition, the suicide and the book about it, launched him on a campaigning career for the right to lawful physician aid in dying."³

The founding of Hemlock⁴

In 1978 with his new wife and co-author Ann, Humphry moved to the United States. He picked up a writing job with the Los Angeles Times. In 1980, from their base in California, the Humphrys founded the Hemlock Society, and began an assertive takeover of the inter national Right to Die movement.

There was some division in the right to die movement at that time. Many in the existing right to die societies were accepting of what they termed passive euthanasia which at times could simply involve the cessation of extraordinary treatment. In these cases that a patient died a natural death from the under- lying illness.

But passive euthanasia is a dangerously indefinite term; it could also involve the removal of basic and minimal comfort care, like food and water for quadriplegic patients. In such cases the patient does not die from any underlying illness, and this certainly could not be described as a natural death. They were simply disabled people who literally died of thirst. Nevertheless, the passive euthanists drew a bright line of distinction between themselves and "active'' euthanists.

As active euthanasia was rejected by some in the right-to-die movement as dangerous and aggressively utilitarian, in the early 1980's many self—described, passive euthanists opposed Humphry's radical notion of another individual taking lethal measures against a patient, even if it was with the victim's