Kevorkian may be remembered as a reformer

Not many individuals were demonized as vociferously and consistently during their lifetime as Jack Kevorkian. However, the Michigan pathologist who died last week at age 83 believed far too strongly in his cause to be discouraged by hidebound, vicious critics who hysterically compared him to every murderer from Adolf Hitler to Charles Manson to Vlad the Impaler.

But if few people were publicly raked over the coals as ferociously and unrelentingly as Kevorkian was, even fewer seemingly embraced being slandered like he did. Although his dogged efforts to legitimatize and legalize the right to choose how and when to die resulted in his being labeled “Dr. Death” and far worse by opponents of the nascent “Death with Dignity” movement, Kevorkian never backed off from his beliefs.

In retrospect, Kevorkian’s harshest and most persistent critics may have unwittingly aided his efforts to gain acceptance for assisted suicide; their relentless attacks on him kept his cause in the public eye. He undoubtedly knew the price he’d pay for his views was shrill, endless, and at times nearly universal vilification from a large and intractable segment of the population equally as ardent about their point of view as Kevorkian was about his. But his uncompromising commitment and dedication to what he believed in required far more courage than heaping abuse upon him did from his detractors. Kevorkian risked (and ultimately welcomed) imprisonment for the actions he took in order to further his beliefs; how many of his antagonists were willing to pay that price?

The reaction Kevorkian received in response to his determined and deliberately provocative challenges to social taboos was consistent with treatment past social reformers have gotten. People have resisted change for as long as human beings have banded together to form societies, even on those occasions when the proposed modi-fication(s) would benefit nearly everyone involved. Throughout history, those suggesting alterations to accepted sociological, technological, biological and religious norms have been laughed off, dismissed, derided, undermined, demonized, assaulted, and in extreme cases, eliminated by those who for a variety of reasons were unable or unwilling to let go of what they knew to be right and/or true because, well, they just knew it was right and/or the truth.

Some of Dr. Kevorkian’s more rabid critics compared him to John Brown, the wild-eyed abolitionist whose fanatical opposition to the evil of human bondage led him to armed insurrection and murder. But Brown’s hatred of slavery led him to kill innocent people; Kevorkian merely assisted able-minded individuals wishing to end their suffering to painlessly and willingly terminate their own lives.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were initially ignored when they formed the American Equal Rights Association in 1866 in order to promote universal suffrage. But later, when it began to appear their efforts might indeed bear fruit, they and their allies were vilified by the establishment of their day with a ferocity similar to that which Dr. Kevorkian was treated to more than a century later.

The Wright Brothers were dismissed as crackpots when they suggested man could fly; early proponents of automobiles got the same derision, which grew more intense as the possibility of their vision becoming a reality became more likely. And much of the resistance to their proposed innovations came from horse breeders, wagon builders, and others who stood to lose out if the inventors looking to change society were successful.

For similar reasons, those proposing sociological changes have always faced the same obstacles technological groundbreakers have, and from the same kinds of sources. Many religious leaders denounced Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories as heresy in the mid-19th century. Their successors just as predictably vilified Margaret Sanger and other proponents of reproductive rights nearly 100 years later when the birth control pill was introduced.

But as Darwin pointed out, human beings evolve, and so do societies. Few presidents were as bitterly criticized while in office as Abraham Lincoln was; today he is one of American history’s few deities. Half a century ago Martin Luther King, Jr. was seen by much of America as a disrespectful, uppity rabble-rouser; today America rightly marks the anniversary of his birth with a national holiday.

Jack Kevorkian’s courage resulted in the growth of hospice care in the United States, and in an increased willingness by society in general, and doctors in particular, to reconsider their thoughts about palliative care.

If America continues to progress there’s little doubt history will view Jack Kevorkian as a courageous reformer sooner rather than later. Two decades after he became the only U.S. president to resign in disgrace, Richard Nixon was memorialized on a postage stamp. If the United States Postal Service still exists 20 years from now, America’s boldest pioneer in the field of end-of-life protocol ought to be on one as well.

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