Customer Reviews

Prescription Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death

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``Dr. Death'' got his start with campaigns to allow death row inmates to donate their organs (currently organ donation is impossible). If you take a heart, a liver, two kidneys, two corneas, and bone marrow from a willing donor with a known execution date, and you can save quite a few lives with his death.

It's common-sense arguments like these, not grisly death-obsession, that makes this book worth reading. I expect that some readers will find the sections on euthanasia distasteful, but the subject is handled carefully and smartly.

For all his faults, Kevorkian is a strong and articulate voice who is too often written off automatically as a crank and a murderer. Read this book in order to balance your perspective, then judge him if you wish.

I purchased this book here from Amazon and after reading it I sent it, along with a nice letter in support of Kevorkian to him. Within 2 weeks he personally signed and returned my book to me.

I enjoyed this book. It explains how and why he got into assisted suicide.

If you are against what Dr. Jack does, be open minded and read this book. He is not a weird old man, he is a humanitarian. He makes no salary, and does this because he doesn't want people to suffer.

You will enjoy this book... I couldn't put it down.

This book is not only an eye opener but it also expresses Kevorkian frustration with the governments control over medicine. It's kind of nice to see that old people have issues they like to fight for as well. At one point talks of his quest to encourage the government to allow peoplle on death row to donate their bodies to science but the government. Kevorkian is a good man and it saddens me to think what the media has done to him.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian's 1991 book advocating voluntary medical experimentation on, and organ donation from, death row inmates and assisted suicide patients is written in a clear, lucid, and intelligent manner. Kevorkian argues why euthanasia-- given the right controls-- should be legal and available to terminally ill and suffering patients. Anybody who thinks this man is a nutcase will change his or her mind after reading this well-thought out book. He also makes us look at our own knee-jerk reactions to certain issues regarding death and see how irrational they are. The world needs more brilliant minds like Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

Jack Kevorkian
Prescription: Medicide:
The Goodness of Planned Death

(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991)
(ISBN: 0-87975-677-2; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: R726.K48 1991)

The world-famous 'assisted-suicide' doctor
tells of his life-long efforts to permit prisoners condemned to death
to donate their organs and/or give their bodies to be used in medical research.
After about 200 pages, he gets around to discussing his efforts
to make physician-assisted voluntary death acceptable in America.
This book is filled with Dr. Kevorkian's personal quirks,
but it is nevertheless worth reading
for its contribution to the on-going debate about the right-to-die.

Kevorkian suggests that transplant-teams could go to prisons
in order to harvest the organs donated by prisoners on death-row
immediately after their executions.
But this reviewer believe the public would initially be strongly against
such mixing of capital punishment and organ-donation.
But he has nevertheless started a website in favor of this change:
Search the Internet for this website: "ORGAN DONATION AFTER EXECUTION".
And he has also started a Facebook Page called:
Prisoner Organ Donation.

Kevorkian would permit permanent unconsciousness as a definition of death,
which would be wisest for the purpose of keeping the organs alive.
General anesthesia could be administered to the condemned prisoner.
He or she could be pronounced dead
because consciousness has gone out for the last time.
Then the still-breathing body (sustained by artificial means)
could be transported to the appropriate medical center,
which has agreed in advance to accept the anatomical donation.
(Perhaps a prison guard would have to accompany the donated body
to make sure that no one attempts to 'revive' the executed prisoner.)

For greater public acceptance of organ donation after execution,
the concept of 'brain-death' will have more traction than 'permanent unconsciousness'.
Also transplant centers are well-accustomed to dealing with brain-dead donors.

After execution by the most appropriate means,
resulting in a certified and recorded brain-death,
the prisoner who has volunteered to donate his organs after execution
will have his or her brain-dead body sustained on 'life-support' equipment.

This would not be different from keeping accident victims 'alive'
on life-support machinery until their organs can be harvested
and transplanted into the most appropriate recipients.
All of these procedures take place after death has been declared.

Since capital punishment has fallen out of favor in many places,
an idea not mentioned by Dr. Kevorkian might be implemented: voluntary execution.
Prisoners who would otherwise have to live in prison for the rest of their lives
would be given the option of voluntary execution
(with elaborate safeguards to prevent coercion).
Most of these would be murderers who were condemned to life-imprisonment for their crimes.
And some of them might like to make amends by donating their bodies
so that their organs could be used to save several lives
that would otherwise end without those donated organs.
Kevorkian did discover surprisingly positive attitudes
among prisoner about donating their organs.

Transplant surgeons will not accept organs from prisoners
until after much more public debate has settled the legal and moral questions.
Doctors want iron-clad guarantees
that they will never be sued or otherwise sanctioned by anyone
or indicted by the prosecutor for committing any crime.

Kevorkian weakens the basic arguments of this book
by including a fictional chapter
about medical experiments performed on a condemned man.
No medical institution or prison
would allow medical experimenters into the execution chamber.
Kevorkian's idea is that the condemned man
has nothing to lose if the experiment goes bad:
He is going to die in a few minutes in any case.
If Jack Kevorkian re-publishes this book,
he should leave this chapter out.

Before any life-threatening medical experiments are permitted,
the body upon which the experiments are to be performed must be declared dead.
Permanent unconsciousness (achieved by drugs or brain-surgery)
might be used as the criterion for determining that death has taken place.
Or well-recognized criteria for brain-death could be used.
After the official declaration of death,
the 'living cadaver' can be transported to the medical center
that has agreed in advance to receive it.
Prisoners who choose voluntary execution
might lead the way for all kinds of new medical uses for 'living cadavers'.
Both "voluntary execution" and "living cadaver" are good Internet search terms.

Jack Kevorkian might be called the Lone Ranger of the Right-to-Die.
He has not cooperated with others who are committed to this right.
And often his comments seem so out-of-touch with public opinion
that one wonders if he ever got any feedback for his writing
before sending it off to the publisher.
Nevertheless, he became for a time
the best-known name in the right-to-die movement.
And now that he is out of jail once again,
he has opportunities to speak wherever he wishes.
People will hear him because of his famous name.

This book was published before he had helped many people to die.
So perhaps he should write another book now that he has retired from that work.
He can help us all to think more deeply about the right-to-die,
based on his front-line experiences of helping others to die.

Some parts of this book suggest that Dr. Kevorkian does not distinguish
between irrational suicide and voluntary death.
As long as the patient has considered some alternatives
and has now decided to die, then he or she should be helped.
Kevorkian tells us that he has turned down many more people
than people he has helped to die.
But, of course, the press covered only the people who killed themselves with his help.

In this reviewer's opinion,
Jack Kevorkian did not fulfill enough safeguards
for the people whom he helped to die.
He just wanted to know the medical condition
and he wanted to make sure that the patient himself or herself
was willing and able to take the final actions that would bring death.
When he violated his own principles
--by being too actively involved in the last death--
he was tried and convicted of murder in the second degree.
Interestingly enough, he was not tried or convicted
for the crime of assisting a suicide,
which is basically what he was doing in the eyes of most observers.

This reviewer would say that Dr. Kevorkian was assisting in voluntary deaths.

This was an early book in the modern debate about the right-to-die.
And if it is published again,
it should focus on either organs from the executed
or on voluntary death and merciful death,
not both the right-to-die and organ donation.
The expression "medicide" never caught on.
It was meant to describe any death achieved by a doctor.
And the sub-title is hard to pronounce:
"The Goodness of Planned Death".
"Voluntary death" or "freely-chosen death" would have been better.
Another pleasing expression is "timely death".

Since you have read to the end of this book-review,
you are probably deeply interested in the right-to-die.
You will find my recommendations for other books to read on the Internet:
"Books on the Right-to-Die".

James Leonard Park, advocate of the right-to-die with careful safeguards.

This is a very boring book about some of Dr. Kevorkian's early years in medicine. His quest to help give death row inmates the chance to volunteer their unconscious body for medical experimentation, or to donate their organs for transplantation before being executed.