edure. Put aside the arguments about the right to die. Shelve the ethical question about doctor assisted suicide. Jack Kevorkian is on the loose again (Quill A11) explained one newspaper article. The state of Michigan has a serial killer on its hands. Or maybe, even better a mercy killer. Kevorkian or Dr. Death thinks of himself as a maverick or a martyr; even a crusader like Martin Luther King Jr. But as the count of the dead grows many feel he looks more like Jack the Ripper, M.D. (Gordon 6A) First on the list of Kevorkians patients back in 1990 was Janet Adkins, a woman with Alzheimers disease who pushed the button on the machine in his suicide mobile. He was charged with and acquitted of first-degree homicide. It was ruled that she killed herself and there was no state law against physician assisted suicide. Then last fall came Sherry Miller and Marjorie Wantz, one with multiple sclerosis, the other with chronic vaginal pain. For his involvement with these deaths, he was indicted again for murder and awaits trial. Now, there is Susan Williams, Kevorkian provided the gas canister and hands-off technical assistance to this fifty-two year old woman who was crippled by multiple sclerosis. He was present when she put the gas mask on, pulled the handle and breathed the carbon monoxide, which took her life. (Sack 24A) Surprisingly, each of these women wanted to die. Each of them was grateful, polite, and replete with thanks to the man who provided them with the means. But that does not diminish the fact that Kevorkian has become an ethical outlaw, a free-lance death dealer providing paraphernalia and know-how to users (Gordon 6A). He has no more right to wander around Michigan offering death to ill women than he has putting a loaded gun in the hands of a depressed teenager. As Susan Wolf of the Hastings Center says, The number one thing is that he is killing people. You have to say it how it is. Ye...
