Kevorkian Speaks His Mind

By Jack Kevorkian and Jon Hull

The doctor was firm and combative. "There's no rational argument against this," said Dr. Kevorkian as he sat down with TIME's Midwest bureau chief Jon Hull. At the time, the Michigan legislature was rushing to make assisted suicide a crime punishable by four years in jail. But Kevorkian seemed unperturbed. Asked if he would defy the law, Kevorkian simply said, "I never speculate about the future. All I do is what's right for the patient." Ever since the passage of the law -- and even with last week's court overturn of the ban -- the self-styled obitiatrist has, for the most part, kept his silence. Following are excerpts from Kevorkian's conversation with Hull:

Q. What qualifies you to judge who should and should not get help killing themselves?

A. Being a medical doctor. People say, "Well you're just a pathologist." My specialty is death. And if not a pathologist, who? Would you have a pediatrician do it? Or let's get more absurd. What if I was a urologist? Could I help only men end their lives?

Q. At the very least, shouldn't you have a longstanding relationship with the patient?

A. Why is that important? All the patients I have helped had longstanding relations with their physicians. And where were the physicians? In my medical school days, I saw cases where the surgeon didn't even see the patient until he was under anesthesia on the operating table.

Q. How do you decide whom to help? Does the patient have to suffer from a life-threatening illness?

A. No, of course not. And it doesn't have to be painful, as with quadriplegia. But your life quality has to be nil.

Q. And who decides that?

A. That's up to physicians, and nobody can gainsay what doctors say. It all boils down to the integrity of the doctors. This is what people are afraid of. They don't really trust their doctors, and I can see why. They have made a mess of their profession.

Q. What about people who suffer emotionally and want to die?

A. I get many such calls and requests. But critics would say that the person is not mentally competent to make a rational decision, which is not always true, you know. I'll give you the reason we can't do it now. It hasn't been researched. Once this gets going as a practice for physically debilitated people, the psychiatrists are going to have a whopping job because it is going to be up to them to decide how this fits into their field.

Q. Don't we risk making death too easy?

A. There is only one way to combat that. Only certain specialists should be allowed to do it, in conjunction with personal physicians and any other consultants they bring in. If they misbehave, they get the ax.

Q. You've said you believe there is a conspiracy against you.

A. Oh! At the risk of seeming paranoid: the A.M.A. is opposed to this, and all the medical societies -- but not the average doctor. More than half like it, but they can't speak because the A.M.A. will come down hard on them. You call this a democracy? Ha! It's a cryptic totalitarian state.