Jack Kevorkian

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Jack Kevorkian— born Murad Kevorkian— is infamously known for his chain of mercy-killings throughout the 1990s. He was born in Pontiac, Michigan on May 26th, 1928. Kevorkian had a very strict, religious upbringing and a solitary childhood due to his intense focus on his studies. He excelled in academics at an early age, and even enjoyed extracurriculars such as advanced reading. Once he triumphed high school at just 17 years old, he began attending the University of Michigan, first for engineering, later for botany and biology. Kevorkian graduated in medicine in 1952. During his residency as a pathologist at the university he became fascinated by death. He argued, at one point, for the “terminal human experimentation” he wanted to do on death…show more content…
He called this new machine the “Mercitron”. Following this, Michigan outlawed assisted suicide. This, too, did nothing to stop Kevorkian; he continued his mercy killings, his charges of murder stacked, and his cases were repetitively acquitted. In 1998 the state fixed the loophole in the law they had passed. After allowing the television show 60 Minutes to air a recording of the euthanization of a patient, the court put their foot down and Kevorkian was charged with second degree murder. He served eight years and in 2007 was released on good behaviour with the condition that he would not assist in another suicide again. On June 3rd, 2011 the doctor died at age 83 from liver problems. As I see it, Dr. Kevorkian had every right to assist people with their deaths. As he once said, himself, “dying is not a crime”. The doctor simply had the means that the people he assisted did not, and he was willing to offer them up. Kevorkian is not a murderer, in my eyes, just another doctor doing his job: to cease the discomfort of his patients. I’ll admit, he was very unorthodox in his ways. This fact, I don’t believe is reason enough to exile his practices or him as a person. There are views I do not share with him, such as experimentation on death row inmate, however. I, myself, do not believe in the “death penalty”. What he was most controversial for— the mercy killings— I stand firmly

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