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10 Issues L. & Med. 415 (1994-1995)
Assisted Suicide and Older People - A Deadly Combination: Ethical Problems in Permitting Assisted Suicide

handle is hein.journals/ilmed10 and id is 445 raw text is: Assisted Suicide And Older People- A Deadly Combination: Ethical Problems in Pem itting Assisted Suicide NancyJ. Osgood, Ph.D.* On June 4, 1990, fifty-four-year-old Janet Adkins ended her life lying on a cot in the back of a Volkswagen van parked in a Michigan suburb. Aided by a retired pathologist, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Adkins was hooked up to his homemade suicide machine. She had a needle inserted in her arm, which first started saline flowing and, then, when she pressed the button on the macabre death machine, sent first a sedative and then deadly potassium chloride flowing into her veins. An active woman with loving children and grandchildren, Adkins had flown two thousand miles from her Oregon home to Michigan to seek Kevorkian's assistance in ending her life when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Adkins was an active member of the Hemlock Society, an organization that supports legalizing assisted suicide in America. She made a deliberate decision to end her life rather than face the mental decline associated with senile dementia.' Kevorkian, a long-time proponent of physician-assisted suicide, took that opportunity to use his suicide machine as a way of making a public statement to the medical community and the larger society that suicide is acceptable and that doctors should be willing to assist those who choose to die. Kevorkian was not charged with *Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. B.A. summa cum laude, Yankton College, 1972; M.A., Drake University, 1974; Ph.D., Syracuse University, 1979. Material for this article comes from the final chapter in NANCY J. OSGOOD, SUICIDE IN LATER LIFE (1992) and from the final chapter in NANCY J. OSGOOD ET AL., SUICIDE AMONG THE ELDERLY IN LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES (1991). 1Lisa Belkin, Doctor Tells of First Death Using His Suicide Device, N.Y. TIMES, June 6, 1990, at Al.

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