Jack Kevorkian - Legacy

Legacy

Maria Silveira, a professor of internal medicine, said she became involved with palliative care partly because of the attention Kevorkian brought to the complex issue of unintended suffering, adding that he had a tremendous impact and fueled the public awareness of unintended suffering and the need to address it. Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's lawyer during the 1990s, gave a speech at a press conference in which he stated, "Dr. Jack Kevorkian didn’t seek out history, but he made history." John Finn, medical director of palliative care at the Catholic St. John’s Hospital, said Kevorkian's methods were unorthodox and inappropriate. He added that many of Kevorkian’s patients were isolated, lonely and potentially depressed and therefore in no state to mindfully choose whether to live or die. Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's lawyer in the 1990s, said that Kevorkian revolutionized the concept of suicide by working to help people end their own suffering, because he believed physicians are responsible for alleviating the suffering of patients, even if that meant allowing patients to die. Derek Humphry, author of the suicide handbook, Final Exit, said Kevorkian was "too obsessed, too fanatical, in his interest in death and suicide to offer direction for the nation." Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan, said Kevorkian “was a major historical figure in modern medicine." The Catholic Church in Detroit said Kevorkian left behind a "deadly legacy" that denied scores of people their right to humane deaths. Philip Nitschke, founder and director of right-to-die organisation Exit International, said that Kevorkian "moved the debate forward in ways the rest of us can only imagine. He started at a time when it was hardly talked about and got people thinking about the issue. He paid one hell of a price, and that is one of the hallmarks of true heroism."

The epitaph on Kevorkian's tombstone reads, "He sacrificed himself for everyone's rights."