Kevorkian's Final Solution

Nahman of Bratzlav, a great Chasidic rabbi once proclaimed, "It was difficult for the Angel of Death to kill everybody in the whole world, so he appointed doctors to assist him."

I am finally beginning to understand the rabbi's statement.  Reports of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's recent suicides have me worried.  For years we have been exposed to the ongoing debate of euthanasia.  Now the debate has come to a sudden standstill.  The questions of life and death are no longer in the hands of G‑d or, for that matter, the healing physician. We, the family and the patient, are the ones responsible for decisions.  What a rude awakening!

The family or patient is expected to make monumental decisions about how much suffering there has to be.  They will define what reduces the human being from a living, productive person to an unproductive, undignified person.  Once the patient is catalogued as "undignified and helpless," death should and will follow quickly.  If needed, they may even be helped along.  Hence, we now have the new cliché for a death sentence, "Dying with dignity." 

True, when a  patient is very sick, so sick that he cannot feed nor care for himself, he seems undignified.  But, who says that he can make the decision to die?  For that matter, he may not really care what you think.  All he knows is that he is sick.  He doesn't have to look good when he is feeling sick. 

After 25 years of chaplaincy I have come to the conclusion that almost all patients are just happy to be alive and cared for.  Sure, they would like to be without pain or suffering but none of them really think about ending their lives. 

This brings me to the on-going saga of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.  Here we have a physician who has become a willing methodological murderer. He believes that as a learned physician, the healer of flesh, he has the outright permission and G‑d given right to decide who shall live and who shall die.  He actually claims that what he is doing is legal and right. Therefore, nobody should stop him.  Well, I know he is dead wrong.

Imagine for one moment the following scenario:

A person so sick of life goes to his local mechanic and asks to be killed.  He tells his friend, Louis, the mechanic, that he would like his car exhaust pipe to be hooked up to a special hose and placed in his car so that he could kill himself.  Would anyone do that?  Would it enter anyone's mind that this is not murder?  The answer is unequivocally, no!  We don't want to be an accomplice to murder.  If Louis, or anyone, would assist in this diabolic plan, they would be held as an accessory to murder.  That's the law that most of us know.  Why in the world would we think Dr. Kevorkian should be above the law?  Why should this person claim that he has the G‑d given right as a skilled physician to not only cure and prevent sickness but also to end sickness by aiding suicide?

Now don't think we are talking about crazies.  The people whom Jack Kevorkian puts to sleep are very normal people.  They are distinguished by the fact that they are depressed and disenchanted about the future. They welcome death thinking that death is preferable to an undignified life.

Who says death is more dignified? In fact, the person who commits suicide is damning his soul. From what I have studied, a soul suffers a lot more by being cast out of the body through suicide than being in the sick body. As a great philosopher once said, "I have dissected thousands of cadavers and still have not found a soul."  Once dead, the soul goes to heaven. Most  G‑d fearing Americans believe that there is a soul. Perhaps Dr. Kevorkian and his fellow assistants feel that it may not be worth worrying about souls. 

There is an old expression, "Both the doctor and the Angel of Death kill, but the former charges a fee." The truth is that every physician carries the responsibility for extending life and alleviating the pain and suffering of the patient. Physicians must remember that abandonment is not part of the physician's right. If healing means to sustain a patient no matter what quality of life there is, then he should continually do that.  We, the families, should learn how to help the dying by giving them a sense a dignity. 

As life begins to fade and the soul prepares itself to return to its creator, there should be a state of calmness and fulfillment. The dying patient should be infused with the feeling of having fulfilled all that they can in a body. They have accomplished all that is expected from the body and now will return the soul. They should not be made to feel that they are a burden to the family. 

I received a phone call late at night. An engineer called about sustaining his old father who was in his late 90's and had suffered from a stroke. The physicians wanted to know what he, the son, felt would be best for his father. Being a religious person he called me and said that he wants a rabbi to help him with the decision.

In establishing that this man already was on a respirator and was connected to life support I told him to have hope, pray and keep on sustaining. For two months the elderly man wavered between life and death. Towards the end he had his respirator removed. Quite unexplainably he was able to call his son by his name and then he passed away.

When I asked the engineer after the funeral, "Was it worth it?" He answered, "Definitely! To be able to be close to my Dad and hear him call me before he passed away was worth all the medicines, expense and personal suffering." The two months of dying brought more dignity and love to the father and son than ever before. Physicians must remember that their responsibility is in healing and not in abandonment. If healing means to sustain, then this is what the physician must do. It is only of late that physicians and health practitioners have become entangled with questions of life and death ultimately forcing families to make unqualified decisions.

When dealing with the sick and hooking them on the life support line, we shouldn't think of it as a cold hold button soon to be disconnected but rather as music on hold, as a time and opportunity for the patient and family to make everlasting peace and make the proper good-byes. Think of it as holding on to one another and, as the time draws near the finish line, all was done with grace and dignity. The physician must realize that G‑d has given him the gift to practice medicine in order to heal the sick. This gift is limited and is to be used for curing and not for terminating.

When a physician change's places with the Angel of Death, then "both the doctor and the Angel of Death kill", and this must be stopped as soon as possible. Remember, when you visit your doctor, you may have to place your life in his hands.  But, it's in G‑d we trust.