Today, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, popularly known as “Dr. Death” because he has helped more than 100 people commit suicide, announced that he is planning to run for a seat in the U.S. Congress from his home state of Michigan. Since the 1990s, when Kevorkian’s assisted suicides were first publicly exposed, the idea of doctor-assisted suicide has been hotly debated. It is not, however, a new issue. Even in Thomas Jefferson’s time, euthanasia was a controversial topic. Jefferson wrote about ways people could kill themselves painlessly if they were suffering from incurable illnesses:
“The most elegant thing [for euthanasia or assisted suicide] . . . is a preparation of the Jamestown weed, Datura-Stramonium, invented by the French in the time of Robespierre. Every man of firmness carried it constantly in his pocket to anticipate the Guillotine. It brings on the sleep of death as quietly as fatigue does the ordinary sleep, without the least struggle or motion. . . . It seems far preferable to the Venesection of the Romans, the Hemlock of the Greeks, and the Opium of the Turks. I have never been able to learn what the preparation is, than a strong concentration of its lethiferous principle. Could such a medicament be restrained to self-administration, it ought not to be kept secret. There are ills in life as desperate as intolerable, to which it would be the rational relief, e.g. the inveterate cancer.”
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