Cardinal documents 'human cost' of Kevorkian's euthanasia campaign

This is the text of Cardinal O'Connor's homily at Sunday Mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral Nov. 22.

This very beautiful Gospel [Lk. 23:35-43] and the feast of Christ the King itself summarize the entirety of the Gospels of the year. Everything that has happened during the year is brought into focus in the crucifixion, the death and the resurrection of our Divine Lord. It was very difficult, of course, for the bystanders to see a king, past, present or future, in the Christ whose flesh has been stripped from his bones, whose blood was still pouring into the ground, whose head was pierced with thorns, who was clearly beaten, torn apart as by savage wolves. That is the way it is with the Church. After 2,000 years the Church does not look anymore like the infant Church perhaps than Christ himself on the cross looked like that tender infant in the manger in Bethlehem. It was the same Christ. He had come to fulfill the very reason for entering into this world.

The feast of Christ the King is a wonderful reminder, most desperately needed in this culture of death, that it is indeed still God's world. Christ is the King. Perhaps this reminder is needed particularly when we read in the newspapers that this evening on "60 Minutes," if we understand the reports correctly, Dr. Kevorkian will be pictured actually putting someone to death. One could ask, "Where is God?" "Where is the Church?" "Have we simply lost the battle?" "Might we as well merely give up?"

I have no idea how this scene will be depicted on television this evening. I have not seen any preview of it. I suspect, whether or not the producers intend this, that many people will feel very sympathetic toward Dr. Kevorkian and toward the idea of physician-assisted suicide by the time the program has concluded. Most of you here are adults. Most of you have at least as much common sense as I have. Most of you will be able, therefore, to weave your way rationally through whatever you may see and come to the right conclusions. But might I read some passages that could be of help in reaching those conclusions?

First, I would like to read from an attorney for the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, Wesley J. Smith. He writes in the fall edition of Human Life Review:

"The Human Cost of Kevorkianism:

"With so many victims, it has become disturbingly easy for some to lose sight of the ultimate cost that lies at the tragic core of the Kevorkian...juggernaut. To date, we count at least 109 of them (there may be more). Here are a few of their stories.

"Janet Adkins, aged 54, had been diagnosed with 'early Alzheimer's' when she flew to Michigan in 1990 to become Kevorkian's first victim. Few know that it was not Janet but her husband who contacted Kevorkian--it was he who took care of all the arrangements. Adkins was still vigorous at the time--she beat her son at tennis just prior to leaving for Michigan.

"Marjorie Wantz, aged 58: her autopsy report showed fine physical health until the day she flipped a switch, and poison from Jack Kevorkian's suicide machine poured into her veins....She had bitter complaints about pelvic pain but had not followed through with a prescribed program of pain control. Wantz' real problem appears to have been emotional or mental. She had been hospitalized for psychiatric illness, and according to published reports had been overdosing on Halcion, a sleep aid that can cause suicidal impulse when abused. Kevorkian helped kill this woman without verifying any organic illness or injury and, presumably, without referring her for psychiatric help.

"Margaret Garrish, aged 72: she turned to Kevorkian because she was in terrible pain from rheumatoid arthritis. Prior to her assisted killing, [Dr. Kevorkian's lawyer] Fieger called a news conference and played a video of Garrish, whose identity was concealed, in which she begged for medical help for her pain. Fieger issued a threat that unless physicians came forward to care for her, Kevorkian would act. At least seven pain control specialists wrote Fieger, offering to treat Garrish. But Fieger never put them in touch with her and Kevorkian soon ended her life... [We have right here in New York at Memorial Sloane-Kettering Hospital, Dr. Kathleen Foley, one of the outstanding pain control doctors in the world. Many a patient has been able to live longer and pain-free because of the assistance of people like Dr. Foley.]

"Esther Cohan, aged 46: she had multiple sclerosis and was disabled but not terminally ill. Cohan's sister told reporters that her sister's body was covered with bed sores. Yet, according to Fieger, Kevorkian had been 'counseling' Cohan for months before her death. At the time, Dr. Randolph Schiffer, an adviser to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, told me, 'If a patient with multiple sclerosis has bed sores, it means by definition that, for whatever reason, they are receiving inadequate medical care.' Apparently Kevorkian and Fieger either didn't know that or, as seems more likely, didn't care.

"Patricia Cashman, aged 58: when Fieger announced Cashman's death, he declared, 'She suffered from metastatic breast cancer that had spread to her bones, her chest, and her brain....She had been on every drug known to man and woman, including morphine, and nothing helped.' Wrong. Her autopsy showed only microscopic traces of cancer. There were no cancer tumors in her bones or any vital organ system.

"Rebecca Badger, aged 39: she believed that she had multiple sclerosis when she flew to Michigan to be 'attended' by Kevorkian. She also complained about inadequate pain control and having to wait hours at public hospitals for medical treatment because she was uninsured. However, her autopsy showed she had no known organic disease...

"Judith Curren, aged 57: Curren's autopsy showed no evidence of organic disease; she was obese, addicted to pain killers, and may have had a nonterminal disease commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome. She was brought to Michigan by her husband, a psychiatrist, whom she had had arrested for spousal abuse a mere few weeks earlier. Fieger outrageously compared her condition to AIDS, and falsely claimed that the syndrome can be progressive and fatal, a notion quickly rebutted by medical experts.

"Roosevelt Dawson, aged 21: Dawson was in the midst of a depression over a viral infection that left him paralyzed. Fieger represented him to obtain a court order for his release from the hospital so he could be killed by Kevorkian. Within five hours of his release, Dawson was dead, thwarting attempts by the disability-rights community and the Catholic Church to reach him for counseling to overcome depression and feelings of hopelessness.

"Joseph Tushkowski, aged 45: The body of homicide victim Joseph Tushkowski underwent 'a bizarre mutilation,' proclaimed Dr. Dragovic, who conducted the autopsy. According to Dragovic, after lethally injecting Tushkowski, the mutilators crudely ripped out his kidneys without even bothering to remove the dead man's clothes. They simply lifted up his sweater, did their dirty work and tied off the blood vessels with twine. Months earlier, Kevorkian and Fieger had appeared at a press conference promising to begin harvesting organs from assisted-suicide victims. True to their word, Kevorkian and Fieger's law partner Schwartz offered Tushkowski's kidneys, 'first come, first served.' There were no takers."

Dr. Herbert Hendin is a professor of psychiatry at the New York Medical College. He is executive director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Dr. Hendin has studied extensively what has happened in the Netherlands since so-called euthanasia was introduced and what has happened in the United States. I quote:

"Kevorkian's fascination with death has a long and strange history. He was first called 'Dr. Death' during his medical residency in 1956 because of his interest in photographing the retinal blood vessels of patients at the moment of their death in the hope of using the information to distinguish between death and coma, shock, or fainting. He achieved notoriety a few years later with papers suggesting that death row inmates be anesthetized at execution time so that their living bodies could be used for experiments lasting hours or even months, after which they would be given a lethal dose of the anesthetic. He noted that human experiments on criminals would save the lives of innocent animals killed in the name of science.

"His persistent interest in such experimentation led him to be a pariah among physicians and caused the loss of an academic appointment at the University of Michigan..."

The psychiatrist, Dr. Herbert Hendin, continues:

"Ultimately all people who are seriously or terminally ill are vulnerable. As D.J. Bakker points out, 'A very ill or terminally ill patient is completely dependent on others who through their attitude, gesture, tone of voice, and so on, can suggest that the patient, even unconsciously, should ask for euthanasia.' Pellegrino sees much of the suffering of dying patients coming from 'being subtly treated as nonpersons. The decision to seek euthanasia is often an indictment against those who treat or care for the patient.'

"If legalization is generally adopted, the pressure for euthanasia is likely to become internalized so that social acceptance may become a form of coercion. Yale Kamisar asks:

" 'In a suicide-permissive society, in a climate in which suicide is the "rational" thing to do, or at least a "reasonable" option, will it become the unreasonable thing not to do? The noble thing to do? In a society unsympathetic to justifying an impaired or dependent existence, a psychological burden may be placed on those who do not think their illness or infirmity is reason for dying. The presence of a socially approved option becomes a subtle pressure to request it.' "

I am thinking of the youngsters in one of our hospitals, Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center, who are totally vulnerable and incapable of taking care of themselves. Many of them are crippled in a wide variety of ways. I think of those of you here, without offense, in wheelchairs, those that I see each Sunday dependent on others to get here. Thank God you have caretakers who do not consider you burdens. But that can happen in a society.

Dr. Hendin continues:

"Our success in providing palliative care for those who are terminally ill will do much to preserve our social humanity. If we do not provide such care, legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia will become the simplistic answer to the problem of dying.

"Euthanasia advocates have been seduced by death. They have come to see suicide as a cure for disease and a way of appropriating death's power over the human capacity for control. They have detoured what could be a constructive effort to manage the final phase of life in more varied and individualistic ways onto a dangerous route to nowhere. These are not the attitudes on which to base a nation's compassionate social policy. That policy must be based on a larger and more positive concern for people who are terminally ill. It must reflect an expansive determination to relieve their physical pain, to discover the nature of their fears, and to diminish suffering by providing meaningful reassurance of the life that has been lived and is still going on."

There is a remarkable book entitled "Deadly Compassion" by Rita Marker. If we tend this evening or at any other time to be lulled into great sympathy for physician-assisted suicide or for Dr. Kevorkian himself, Rita Marker reminds us:

"For years this slight gray-haired man has had a fixation with death--the death of others. He speaks in italics, as he bluntly pushes for moving away from what he calls the 'emotionalism over the Nuremberg codes.' "

Many here recall the Nuremberg trials and the codes that were devised as a result because huge numbers, long before the Nazi regime came into power and long before Hitler, people were being put to death against their will by German scientists and physicians experimenting on them. Dr. Kevorkian would do away with the Nuremberg codes.

"As a second-year resident physician Kevorkian approached condemned criminals suggesting that they donate their organs. More recently he has speculated about starting death row medical experiments and offering the option of death to prisoners with sentences of three years or more.

"...In one...article, published in 1986, he discussed future plans to make euthanasia more beneficial to society. He called this 'positive euthanasia,' a process by which 'subjects,' including infants, children, and the mentally incompetent, would be used for experiments 'of any kind or complexity.'

" 'If the subject's body is alive at the end of experimentation,...final biologic death may be induced...' Among the methods of death induction are the 'removal of organs for transplantation, a lethal dose of a new or untested drug to be administered by an official lay executioner,' and 'a lethal intravenous bolus of thiopental solution, injected by an official lay executioner.' " [These are quoted as the words of Dr. Kevorkian.]

Finally, we read of the advance of euthanasia in the Netherlands:

"One thousand people--an average of three each day--die from involuntary euthanasia.... [D]eaths in which doctors prescribed, provided, or administered a medication with the specific purpose of causing death, even though the patient had made no explicit request for euthanasia..."

That is the slippery slope we keep talking about. Time does not permit more except to quote briefly from our Holy Father. This quotation from "The Gospel of Life" perfectly fits the feast of Christ our King. In speaking of euthanasia our Holy Father says:

"Quite different from this is the way of love and true mercy, which our common humanity calls for, and upon which faith in Christ the Redeemer, who died and rose again, sheds ever new light. The request which arises from the human heart in the supreme confrontation with suffering and death, especially when faced with the temptation to give up in utter desperation, is above all a request for companionship, sympathy and support in the time of trial. It is a plea for help to keep on hoping when all human hopes fail...

"This natural aversion to death and this incipient hope of immortality are illumined and brought to fulfillment by Christian faith, which both promises and offers a share in the victory of the risen Christ: it is the victory of the One who, by his redemptive death, has set man free from death, 'the wages of sin' [Rom. 6:23], and has given him the Spirit, the pledge of resurrection and of life [cf. Rom. 8:11]. The certainty of future immortality and hope in the promised resurrection cast new light on the mystery of suffering and death, and fill the believer with an extraordinary capacity to trust fully in the plan of God."

It was Christ our King, the Lord of Life, himself dying to give us life, who because of this and only because of this was able to say to the good thief on his right, "This day you will be with me in paradise."