Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990 TAG: 9006060477
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ROYAL OAK, MICH. LENGTH: Medium
Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Portland, Ore., woman, died Monday after traveling 2,000 miles to use the device built by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist and outspoken advocate of what he calls doctor-assisted suicide.
"Her last words to me were something like, `Thank you, thank you very much,' " he said. "I wished her a good trip, and as I leaned over her she seemed like she was rising to meet me, perhaps to give me a kiss of gratitude."
The 62-year-old suburban Detroit doctor also said the woman told him, "You just make my case known."
As it became known, prosecutors considered whether it was illegal and medical professionals debated whether it was ethical. Prosecutors seized the machine and said they would seek a court order today banning use of the device while the case is considered.
"There are many issues here," County Prosecutor Richard Thompson said Tuesday. "Suicide is not a crime in Michigan. . . . But it's not the desire of the deceased that's in question, it's the actions of those involved."
Case law in Michigan is unclear on whether assisting a suicide is a crime, Thompson said. In Oregon, providing the means to commit suicide is a felony.
Adkins' husband called the device humane and said his wife had the right to take her life.
"She loved life. She just lived life to the fullest," Ron Adkins said Tuesday in Portland. "She was a powerful woman and she was an intelligent woman. I was the weak one. She was strong. She had made up her mind."
Adkins released a note his wife had written: "I have Alzheimer's disease and do not want to let it progress any farther. I don't choose to put my family or myself through the agony of this terrible disease."
One of the couple's three sons, Neil, told KGW-TV in Portland, "She was in a very good state of mind, that's the amazing thing. It was not a desperate thing or a depressed situation. She was the one that helped us all through it."
Diana Smith of the Hemlock Society, which advocates suicide rights, said: `It's unfortunate that Mrs. Adkins had to go so far to get the assistance she desired." Smith said Kevorkian used Michigan as a testing ground because it is the only state that doesn't have specific laws against assisting a suicide.
Some ethicists said the doctor acted in violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
"Physicians should not be killers, even in cases where the patient requests it and there is a compassionate reason behind the act," said Susan Wolf of the Hastings Center for biomedical research in Briarcliff, N.Y.
Kevorkian said the Adkinses, members of the National Hemlock Society, traveled to Michigan with a friend on Friday. On Monday, he drove her in his van to a park. Her husband stayed behind at the couple's motel.
"She was anxious and didn't want to delay," Kevorkian said. "But she was the calm - the calmest one involved with the procedure. I can tell you from experience, it was rough."
Kevorkian said he and one of his relatives attached Adkins to a heart monitor, then put an intravenous tube in her arm. The machine consists of a motor and an aluminum frame from which tubes of chemicals are suspended.
The tube first delivered a saline solution. Kevorkian said Adkins then pressed a button that injected thiopental, a coma-inducing drug, followed moments later by potassium chloride, which stops the heart within minutes.
He said she was unconscious in 25 seconds and died in five or six minutes.
by CNB