News

LOS ANGELES, Apr 6 (LSN) – Last week the Associated Press reported that Efren Saldivar, a respiratory care practitioner at the Glendale Adventist Medical Center, was interviewed by police and confessed to 40 to 50 murders of terminally-ill patients. Although Saldivar admitted he considered himself an “angel of death,” reports indicate that he may never be charged with murder.  State law requires additional evidence to prosecute in such cases, for fear of forced or false confessions. In this case, since the lethal injections which Saldivar said he used to kill some patients deteriorate quickly, corroborating evidence may be hard to find. Since the police investigation, the hospital has fired five respiratory therapists, including Saldivar, two managers resigned last Friday, and a technician has been suspended with pay, a spokesman said.  As if the case were not already bizarre enough, leading suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian has denounced Saldivar’s actions. Kevorkian’s attorney Geoffrey Fieger said that “[Saldivar’s]  actions have nothing to do with what Dr Kevorkian is doing….If this guy did what he said he did, then he ought to be put in jail or executed.” Apparently, Fieger’s righteous indignation stems from Kevorkian’s claim to offer his victims a choice, and his belief that this somehow justifies killing. Pro-life observers wonder whether the explanation is even less noble: that Kevorkian is simply unwilling to share the limelight with a rival “Dr Death.”