Talk:Jack Kevorkian

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Yeah.. this page needs to be completely rewritten. Someone with an agenda vanalized the hell out of it.

Contents 1 Abiguity in passage 2 Bias - need for clarification. 3 See also 4 List of patients he's assisted and prior life 5 Paroled in June? 6 Uh..what?

[edit] Abiguity in passage

The following passage I find ambiguous. Please edit... elpincha 13:48, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(...) and in the end is not equipped to evaluate whether a prospective client is clinically depressed and therefore, according to accepted medical (and legal) thought, incapable of deciding to end his own life.

• The passage seems good to me, but if you dont't like it, why don't you go ahead and edit it yourself? Be Bold! --Blackcap | talk 17:23, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with him, it seems overly-wordy, though I understand it, it does take a bit of a pause to swallow :)

[edit] Bias - need for clarification.

I'd like to see some specifics on "including medical experimentation on patients".

The phrase has disturbing overtones which may not deserve to be there.

Clarification would help here: What are these experiments? Do some people find them disturbing? Who?

Anagrammarian 19:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Let's try Jack Kevorkian's own words from his own book!

"If we are ever to penetrate the mystery of death — even superficially — it will have to be through obitiatry...Knowledge about the essence of human death will of necessity require insight into the nature of the unique awareness or consciousness that characterizes cognitive human life. That is possible only through obitiatric research on living human bodies, and most likely by concentrating on the central nervous system...to pinpoint the exact onset of extinction of an unknown cognitive mechanism that energizes life."

You know... you wouldn't be asking this if you bothered reading the references at the bottom of the article! Of course "medical experimentation on patients" is disturbing; we're not talking about a romp through flowers!

bluespider 1:20 19 January 2006

I've looked for the 1988 Medicine and Law article by Kevorkian and it doesn't seem to appear in any of the sources listed at the bottom, nor is it readily available on the internet. Will check into this further.

I think you'd agree we could probably find some better sources, especially as many of the external links are not so much about Kevorkian as they are about assisted suicide in general. They are also from biased sources and advocacy pages. I would hope Wikipedia can do better than rely on these as unbiased primary sources of fact.

For instance, the Kevorkian quote you refer to seems to have come from the article by Wesley J. Smith, which prefaces that quote by saying, "On page 243, Kevorkian explained — and it was pure quackery:". Wouldn't it be better to cite a quote which was not from a polemical article written by an anti-assisted suicide author on the website of a unquestionably conservative magazine like the National Review?

I don't follow your point that "medical experimentation on patients" is necessessarily disturbing. There are plenty of medical experiments which are benign and uncontroversial (surely the majority).

Also there seems to be an issue here with copyright with that sentence anyway, which reads: "In 1988 Kevorkian's article, "The Last Fearsome Taboo: Medical Aspects of Planned Death," was published in Medicine and Law. In it, he outlined his proposed system of planned deaths in suicide clinics, including medical experimentation on patients."

Compare this to a sentence from a pbs.org site: "1988: Kevorkian's article, "The Last Fearsome Taboo: Medical Aspects of Planned Death," is published in Medicine and Law. In it, he outlines his proposed system of planned deaths in suicide clinics, including medical experimentation on patients."

Will change this so it quotes pbs page for now, although I'll try to find a copy of the actual article to compare.

In general, this page needs some work on dealing with an obviously sensitive and controversial issue.

Anagrammarian 23:38, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

So basically you deny that Kevorkian wrote something in the book.... and denying that Kevorkian had some screwy views or even morally scary views.... because these views were highlighted and then insulted by Wesley J. Smith. You know sometimes you only find truth because someone with a particular bias looked for it. The "unbiased" Kevorkian article is vague, shallow, barely scratches the surface as to why and paints the subject as a kind, benign old man. The Smith article is not anti-suicide despite his beliefs. The Smith article is anti-Kevorkian. Sometimes in order to be anti-Kevorkian perhaps you have to know about his life or intentions.

I mean, what kind of kind old man of the people dares the courts to stop him as a challenge? If his primary goal in life was not some libertarian view of death morality but actually to do things like mutilate corpses, just saying and just supposing, why the hell is the most notable thing about his Wikipedia article that he was defending people's "right to die". The vaunted "unbiased" Wiki article just happens to grab hold of exclusively the cuddly version and fuzzy perspective of Jack Kevorkian rather than see a broader vision even if or just because it's disturbing. A better "quality of sources" won't help this soft description of who Kevorkian is or what his goals were. Regardless of the public view of assisted suicide or even mine Kevorkian now seems like a Batman villain to me.

Bluespider 11:26 January 23, 2006

BlueSpider, wouldn't it make more sense to edit the main page and provide the information that you deem necessary (with sources you deem accurate and with a neutral point of view, presumably) than to argue your case on the talk page? Wikipedia guidelines tell us to be bold, after all! Then more people can read it and edit (if they see fit) to attain the neutral point of view that Wikipedia strives for.

SeaworthyViolin 05:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I did edit the main page as such. That was the cause of this argument on the Talk Page. My edits on the main page are/were factually accurate yet it was vandalized and removed because the facts, the truth actually violates Wikipedia NPOV ideology. I defend it now and attack the reverters because I can't really do anything else except cause a revert war. --Blue Spider 18:31, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Listen, the guy is crazy, okay? Live with it.

[edit] See also

Why is Henry Morgentaler linked to from this page? As far as I can tell from that article, he's merely an abortionist and not an euthanasia advocate- while some people surely believe that the two are one and the same, it's rather POV. -Seventh Holy Scripture 21:39, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of patients he's assisted and prior life

Does anyone have a list of patients he's assisted in ending their lives? Also, what was his occupation prior to becoming a public figure?

[edit] Paroled in June?

According to CNN, he is up for parole in June. I thought that somebody with more information could add something about this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ryanizzle (talk • contribs) 16:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Uh..what?

As of now, at the end of the first paragraph, it says "He died in prison on November 13th, 2006." Of course I attempted to correct this, but when I went to correct it, it said "He will be paroled" under "edit". I went back to the article and it still said "died". Uh, help? James 22:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Never mind. It's been changed. James 22:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ummm...it's still fucked up. --68.149.181.145 01:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)