Michigan versus Kevorkian

Our personal reflections on the Michigan versus Kevorkian trial highlight t he following issues: 1) the switch from physician-assisted suicide to eutha nasia, 2) the television showing of the death, 3) the dropping of the prose cution of the charge of physician-assisted suicide, 4) Kevorkian serving as his own defense attorney, trying to argue that ALS was a secondary cause o f Thomas Youk's death, 5) Kevorkian's attempt to employ a logical syllogism to demonstrate that euthanasia need not be murder, 6) Kevorkian's initial reference to the civil rights tradition but sudden change to the medical an alogy of Nazi medicine: a final solution, 7) the insistence of Kevorkian on "all or nothing" sentencing, 8) the irony of Kevorkian being finally convi cted by a prosector who was elected on a platform of not prosecuting Kevork ian, 9) Kevorkian hiring a lawyer after the verdict is in, and 10) Kevorkia n's threat to starve himself to death if sent to prison.