PREYING
ON THE VULNERABLE

Topics: Death; Ethics; Euthanasia; Evil; Murder; Suicide

Reference: Exodus 20:13

Jack Kevorkian preyed on the vulnerable, says a study of the sixty-nine suicides Kevorkian assisted in Oakland County, Michigan. Seventy-five percent of those people would have lived for at least another six months. The vast majority—67 percent—were divorced, widowed, or never married, suggesting they had no social or family support. Only 35 percent were in pain, and 7 percent—five patients—had no evidence of disease at all.

The findings of Oakland County medical examiner and longtime Kevorkian critic L. J. Dragovic were published in the letters section of The New England Journal of Medicine. Kevorkian was convicted of murder and sentenced to ten to fifteen years in jail. He was recently released and vows he will no longer help people end their lives.

—Christianity Today Online Weblog (December 8, 2000)