Summary:
Doctor Kevorkian is the person known as an active protagonist of euthanasia. Joan M. Brovins
and Thomas Oehmke as a Kevorkian’s admirers wrote a book: Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s RX Death
(Lifetime Books, Hollywood 1993). The book has been translated in Czech by Vladimír Smrž in
1996 and has been issued in Prague’s publishing house Brána with the name of Vražda, nebo
milosrdenství? Důvěrná zpráva o radikálním propagátorovi a praktikovi eutanazie.
A purpose of the paper is an analysis of the first 18 cases of euthanasia or assisted suicide
carried out from the point of view of their reasons, euthanasia methods description and their
evaluation and comparison of Kevorkian’s criteria with the reality given, and more detailed
description of Kevorkian’s personality.
The analysis of Kevorkian’s cases enabled to formulate some conclusions:
1. Euthanasia and assisted suicide methods done by Kevorkian do not guarantee to avoid
violent dying.
2. There is a high rate of single or widowed people among euthanasia candidates (a majority
of women).
3. Anxiety and depression is present in many of them.
4. Kevorkian does not pay attention to common ethical issues, he gives those of his own.
5. In spite of his own ethical rules, Kevorkian does not follow them.
6. Euthanasia discussion is accompanied with high level of emotion.
7. Kevorkian created a new speciality - obitiatria.
8. Assisted suicide is called by him as medi-cide (he derivates it from term as homi-cide,
geno-cide, sui-cide or bacteri-cide) what means that he speaks rather on killing of medical
science then on killing by use of medical means.
In the discussion, some aspects of Kevorkian’s activities in broader context are mentioned.
Detailed knowledge of mercy killing carried out helps readers to create their own opinion of the
thema given.
Key words:
euthanasia.
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