Pain of a life dedicated to making death easier

More than 130 people with terminal illnesses in the United States have died by using an assisted suicide machine invented by pathologist Jack Kevorkian, dubbed Dr Death.

Arrested and threatened with prosecution many times, Dr Kevorkian always escaped conviction because it was his patients who pressed the button that injected a lethal mix of liquids into their system, bringing to them a quick death.

But he became increasingly frustrated, as he felt euthanasia should be legalised so many more terminally ill patients could die with dignity.

So in an effort to force the Supreme Court to make a ruling one way or another on euthanasia, the Michigan doctor filmed the assisted-suicide death of a man with the muscle-wasting Lou Gehrig's disease.

The man was not able to press the button himself, so Kevorkian did it for him.

He then sent the film to the television documentary programme 60 Minutes, which screened it.

Kevorkian was arrested, convicted and jailed.

The story of his downfall has been told in a biography written by two of his closest friends.

His story parallels that of New Zealand euthanasia campaigner Lesley Martin.

In her first book, To Die Like a Dog, she wrote how she had tried to fulfil a promise to her dying mother, Joy, to end her suffering, by giving her a morphine overdose, then smothering her with a pillow.

Publication of the book led to police charging Martin with attempted murder. She convicted and sentenced to 15 months in jail.

But the US court took a harsher view of Kevorkian's actions, and sentenced him to 10 to 25 years in a maximum security prison.

The 78-year-old is up for parole next year, but his health has deteriorated so badly that the authors of Between the Dying and the Dead, Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie, believe he will probably die in prison.

Wylie and Nicol said they wrote their book so the public would know about Kevorkian's plight in prison.

"We feel that he is a political prisoner because there have been so many people who have been arrested and convicted of more heinous crimes than his and have been out on parole for long before he has - well he's not even out now," Wylie said.

Nicol said euthanasia was a topic that the American government kept sweeping it under the rug in hope that it would go away.

"And of course it never can go away, it just comes back up again in different areas and more and more people become exposed to it.

"A friend of mine once said 'You can make waves as long as you don't rock the boat'.

"And that's what happened with Jack - he wound up in prison because he chose to rock the boat because making waves wasn't doing it."

Nicol believes Kevorkian is a "man before his time".

"Although I think he has helped to pave the start. I think he has got other people interested, I think he's definitely created better pain management."

Nicol said doctors were now being disciplined for not giving patients adequate pain relief medication.

But Wylie says any law changes allowing euthanasia will not happen in the US for decades.

"I would think that it would be legal in New Zealand and Australia long before the United States. I am 66 years old, I am very healthy, but I do not think that I will live to see the day that they will make it legal in the United States.

"The religious right is very powerful in the United States and it is definitely set against assisted suicide."

Nicol hopes one outcome of the biography's publication will be to "nudge" the medical societies and religious organisations in the direction of assisted suicide and helping patients.

"Also to remind people that a man has given his life for people to get that right, and he's in jail, and to bring the spotlight back on him to see if we can't get something done a little quicker than the judicial system would take."

He says people accept death "in the abstract" but it is hard for them to fully accept it until they get a terminal diagnosis such as Huntingdon's disease, which can kills its victims within three years.

"They never seem to want to accept death until they have to."

He said that was the reason for the title of the book.

"It's from the time that you know for certain that you're dying for certain until you die.

"In that time your attitude towards a lot of things changes. Even people who are staunch supporters of the right to life have a tendency to say 'I don't want to be to be a vegetable, I don't want to have 10 people care for me, I don't want to spend my life savings on medical care'."

Writing the biography had been difficult, but Kevorkian liked the book.

"He would not read the manuscript so when he got the book it was the first time he saw any of if. I had trepidation about how he was going to take it.

"But he took it very well. He said he liked it."

It was a huge relief, Mr Wylie said.

"Because his wrath is very strong."

* Between the Dying and the Dead - $NZ32.95 - is published by Vision Paperbacks.