First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?
Jack KevorkianRead
I'm trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the ethical obligation of the medical profession to provide support in end-of-life choices.
Jack Kevorkian's quote reflects his belief that medical professionals have a moral duty to assist patients in their struggles with terminal illnesses, including decisions around euthanasia and assisted suicide. He argues that the medical community should acknowledge and embrace its responsibilities toward patients who wish to end their suffering, promoting a more compassionate approach to end-of-life care.
In practice
This quote can be used in debates on euthanasia laws during a public forum.
First of all, do any of you here think it's a crime to help a suffering human end his agony? Any of you think it is? Say so right now. Well, then, what are we doing here?
My aim in helping the patient was not to cause death. My aim was to end suffering. It's got to be decriminalized.
The patient decides when it's best to go.
Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.
There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a great wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop them.
Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes.
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life.
And of course these days I feel like there is a nation of us - displaced southerners and children of the working class. We listen to Steve Earle, Mary J. Blige, and k.d. lang. We devour paperback novels and tell evil mean stories, value stubbornness above patience and a sense of humor more than a college education. We claim our heritage with a full appreciation of how often it has been disdained. And let me promise you, you do not want to make us angry.
The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.
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