The only difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia depends on who performs the act that causes death. With euthanasia, a doctor would administer the lethal injection, taking the final step to end the patient's life. With assisted suicide, the patient would cause their own death, perhaps meaning that he or she would flick a switch to begin a fatal injection after the doctor had hooked them up to an IV, such as in the case with Dr. Kevorkian (2003).
Dr. Jack Kevorkian is a physician, with whom most of us are familiar, who is serving a life-long prison sentence, due to his practice of physician assisted suicide. Long before he began his practice, he was a committed euthanasia advocate. One of the instances of assisted suicide involving Dr. Kevorkian that has received the most attention involves fifty four year old Janet Adkins, who was suffering severely from Alzheimer's disease. Adkins and her husband contacted Kevorkian, who consulted with her and agreed to help her die with dignity. After consultation, Dr. Kevorkian used his controversial invention, the "Mercitron," a machine made for the purpose of aiding his patients in death, to put Janet Adkins to rest. Kevorkian hooked her up to the machine, pumping saline solution into her; however Adkins pushed the button on the machine to replace the saline solution with thiopental, (a pain killer) which .
McKee 3.
rendered her unconscious. The thiopental was then automatically replaced with potassium chloride. Within five minutes, when Adkins's heart had stopped, Kevorkian unhooked her from the machine and called the police. While this specific instance is one example of Dr. Kevorkian's more controversial practices of assisted suicide, the .
Adkins family still supports her decision, arguing that quality of life was everything to her (Mooney 219).
The series of events that have put Dr. Kevorkian in jail are a result of religious fanaticism during a time when intolerance is surprisingly on the rise (Fieger 238).
