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Jack Kervorkian was born May 28, 1928 in a small suburb of Detroit Michigan. As he was growing up Kervorkian dreamed of training under Jack Grand to be a radio baseball broadcaster. His parents wanted him to pursue a more promising career. Kervorkian was an average kid and he played normal kiddy games. Kervorkian was bored with school but he read vigorously. His childhood friend, Richard Dakesian once said that Kervorkian should have graduated high school at the age of 13 or 14.
Kervorkian graduated in 1945 from Pontiac High School at the age of 17. He then received his undergraduate from the University of Michigan, and then went on to University of Michigan Medical School and graduated in 1952. Kervorkian continued his residencies at Pontiac General, Detroit Receiving and University of Michigan Medical Center. In 1958 Kervorkian drove to the Ohio State Penitentiary to ask inmates on death row if he could experiment on dead bodies.
Only one answered Kervorkian's request and gave him full rights to his body. When questioned by others in the medical field, Kervorkian replied, it would be a unique privilege to be able to experiment on a doomed human being. The publicity from the death row experiments caused embarrassment for the University of Michigan. The head of pathology asked Kervorkian to drop his research. Kervorkian left University of Michigan and returned to Pontiac General. At Pontiac General the rules were more loose and Kervorkian could get away with transfusing the blood from corpses into patients.
Kervorkian practiced this method until he thought he had poisoned a colleague when he had fed her veins the blood of a freshly dead intoxicated girl. The colleague had tasted the liquor in her mouth even though the blood was coming in through an IV. In the 60 s Kervorkian took an adult education class in oil painting. While the domestic engineers painted their family pets and clowns, Kervorkian painted harsh portraits of mutilated body parts. Much to his surprise the rest of the class was not repulsed but intrigued by his work. By the end of the semester 18 housewives were painting bloody works of art.
By 1970 Kervorkian had become the chief pathologist at Saratoga General Hospital. Kervorkian was also engaged to a store clerk, but broke it off after he decided she had no self-discipline. Kervorkian quit Saratoga in 1976 to work for Penumbra, Inc to produce a movie. He succeeded in creating a 90 -minute film, but it was never exhibited. Kervorkian did succeed in publishing an article on the experiments on executed humans in the Journal of the National Medical Association in 1981. By 1986 there was nothing left for Kervorkian in California, so he packed his things and moved to Royal Oak, Michigan.
Living above a singles bar, Kervorkian was out of place. Helped off his savings as he went from one hospital to another looking for a job. Not even the Oakland County Medical Examiners office would hire Kervorkian, because of his controversial experiments and articles he had published. While watching his mother die a slow painful death from cancer Kervorkian began to think about euthanasia.
In June of 1987 Kervorkian placed ads in local papers advertising his services. The advertisement only produced two calls, and neither was what Kervorkian was looking for. In August a friend of his, George Adams, published an article about Kervorkian's ideas on euthanasia and criminals on death row donating their organs. The article in Health Care Weekly Review was Kervorkian's first widespread exposure, but it created a lot of negative response from the Detroit area medical professionals and administrators. In the summer of 1989 Kervorkian designed Thanatron. Greek for death machine it starts with a harmless intravenous drip of saline solution.
The patient then presses a button that stops the saline and starts a new drip of Thiopental and sets a 60 -second timer. The Thiopental puts the patient into a deep coma. When the timer goes off a lethal dose of Potassium Chloride is injected through the IV and stops the heart in minutes. Thanatron is often described as dying in your sleep, quick, painless, and easy. Kervorkian found all the supplies at a local hardware store and garage sales, the total cost for the death machine, $ 30. Kervorkian wanted to test his machine on a stray dog that was going to be put to sleep anyway.
The local dog pound sent him to get permission from the County Health Department, who told him to go to the Humane Society. The Humane Society said that he must put his request in writing and submit it to the next board meeting, which was four weeks away. Frustrated, Kervorkian gave up and decided he would use it first on a human, and his search for a subject began. Pontiac General rejected Kervorkian's request to post an ad on the Oakland County Medical Society Bulletin. When a local television station caught wind of the rejection they featured Kervorkian and his suicide machine on TV. The show attracted attention and Kervorkian received a few phone calls but once again they werent the people he was looking for.
The Oakland Press and The Detroit News got a hold of Kervorkian's story and once again he was receiving the attention he needed to find a patient. On November 13, 1989, Ronald Adkins read an article on Jack Kervorkian in Newsweek and called Jack Kervorkian. Janet Adkins was Ronald's wife and Kervorkian's first patient. She was a 54 -year-old woman who suffered from Alzheimers and died June 4, 1990. On December 13, murder charges were dropped because Michigan did not yet have a law against assisted suicide.
In October of 1991 Kervorkian assists three more suicides, which lead to the suspension of his medical license on November 20. On December 13, 1992 a Michigan Supreme Court ruled that assisted suicide is illegal and an assisted suicide law is constitutional. Over the years Kervorkian has assisted over 30 people commit suicide. Many of them were controversial; one of the debatable deaths was Thomas You. He died from lethal injection and videotape of his death was aired on CBS two months later.
On November 25, 1998 Kervorkian was charged with second degree murder, assisted suicide, and delivery of a controlled substance in You death. The assisted suicide charge was later dropped. After a long trial Kervorkian was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison, which he is appealing.
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Research essay sample on University Of Michigan Assisted Suicide
