PORTLAND, Dec 7, 2000 (LSN.ca) – A study of 69 assisted suicides committed by Jack Kevorkian has revealed that 75% of his victims were not terminally ill. The results of the study published in a letter in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine note that seventy-two percent of the patients had had a recent decline in health status that may have precipitated the desire to die. Data analyzed from the Oakland County medical examiner’s files, including autopsy findings for the 69 deaths, showed that seventy-one percent of the victims were women, a finding that is noteworthy because suicide rates are usually lower among women than among men.
The data on victims who died from 1990 to 1998 suggested that “Persons who were divorced or had never married were over represented . . . suggesting the need for a better understanding of the familial and psycho social context of decision making at the end of life.” The researchers concluded that the “findings underscore the vulnerability of women and groups of men (i.e., those not married and those coping with serious illness) to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, particularly when clinical safeguards are lacking.”
The study was conducted by Dr. Lori Roscoe, Dr. Donna Cohen, and Julie E. Malphurs, M.A. all from the University of South Florida Tampa in conjunction with L.J. Dragovic, M.D. from the Office of the Medical Examiner in Pontiac, Michigan. Meanwhile, Kevorkian remains in prison sentenced to 10-25 years after his 1999 second-degree murder conviction in the televised euthanasia of Thomas Youk.
See the letter in the NEJM at: https://www.nejm.org/content/2000/0343/0023/1735.asp