Salon.com > Jack Kevorkian

Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian dies

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:56:00 +0000

A lawyer and friend of Jack Kevorkian says the assisted suicide advocate has died at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83.

Mayer (MAY'-uhr) Morganroth tells The Associated Press that Kevorkian died Friday morning at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized. He says nurses played classical music by Kevorkian's favorite Johan Sebastian Bach before he died.

Kevorkian had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia and kidney problems.

Morganroth says Kevorkian was conscious Thursday night and the two spoke about leaving the hospital and getting ready for rehabilitation.

Kevorkian was released from a Michigan prison in 2007 after serving eight years for second-degree murder. He claims to have assisted in at least 130 suicides.

Al Pacino brings Jack Kevorkian to life

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 15:01:00 +0000

Most Americans are willfully ignorant about death. We cling so desperately to our distractions, our novelties, our money, our diversions, all with the illusion that we can put off death indefinitely, that any direct talk of death makes us uncomfortable.

"We're all going to die someday," the realist tells us. "We get older and older, and eventually, we die."

"Jesus, could you stop being so negative?" we respond.

"It's really best to plan for it before it happens, so we have some control over how it goes," the realist counters.

"Plan for it? God, you're morbid," we say, turning back to our iPhones to tweet about the fantastic pastrami we had for lunch.

We actively divert our attention from death each day, and then one day, there it is, rudely interrupting our normal routines, and we're bewildered by how cruel and callous the world suddenly seems. Doctors who refuse to weep with us! Coroners who go about their business as if they do this several times a day! Funeral home directors who gesture gracefully to a plentiful box of tissue, pursing their lips in a grotesque affectation of heartfelt sympathy! It's all so macabre, yet so mundane! It's just so wrong.

Let the litigation begin

Fri, 28 May 1999 16:00:00 +0000

"This is not about money!"

So declared Michael Shoels as he announced his family's $250 million wrongful death lawsuit against the parents of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. "This lawsuit is about change!" Shoels insisted. "That's the only way you get change, if you go rattling their pocketbooks."

Welcome to Round Two of the Columbine Tragedy, where the action shifts to the courtroom, but the focus remains squarely on the media.

Fresh from victory in the sensational Jenny Jones tabloid television trial, and several assisted-suicide cases for Dr. Jack Kevorkian before that, attorney Geoffrey Fieger flew to Denver to represent the parents of Isaiah Shoels, the only African-American killed in the April 20 attack that left 15 dead. The suit filed Thursday in Denver's District Court charges the killers' parents with five counts of parental negligence.

Fieger said the suit against the killers' parents is just the beginning: He plans to eventually target police, school authorities, gun manufacturers, accessories to the murders and "any individual who directly contributed to two sick children possessing an arsenal and access to the school."

Newsreal: Pol Pot sends his regrets

Thu, 05 Mar 1998 20:00:00 +0000

NEW YORK --Time Magazine's 75th birthday bash has been noted in certain quarters for the odd assortment of celebrity guests in attendance. Some have wondered what such well-known merchants of sleaze, bigotry and death as Dick Morris, Jerry Falwell, F. Lee Bailey and Dr. Jack Kevorkian were doing there nibbling canapis and having their pictures taken alongside Bill Gates, Joe DiMaggio, Steven Spielberg, Claudia Schiffer, Sean Connery, Kofi Annan and President Clinton. But, as Time managing editor Walter Isaacson strenuously pointed out, there were no moral or value judgments made in drawing up the guest list. It didn't matter what you had done in the past 75 years to advance or impede the cause of human progress, it was whether you had enough wattage to have made it onto Time magazine's cover. "It helps that being on the cover of Time is a certain touchstone for America, and people who have been on the cover like to come back and celebrate this fact," said Isaacson, author of a respectful biography of Time cover luminary and noted war criminal Henry Kissinger.

Unfortunately, not all Time cover boys and girls were able to attend. Among those who sent their regrets: