Jack Kevorkian Promotes Euthanasia Again, Al Pacino HBO Movie Out Next Year

Bioethics   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 2, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Jack Kevorkian Promotes Euthanasia Again, Al Pacino HBO Movie Out Next Year

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 2
, 2009

Detroit, MI (LifeNews.com) — In one of his first lengthy interviews following eight years in prison for murdering a disabled patient on national television, Jack Kevorkian is at it again promoting euthanasia. Meanwhile, the movie that will glorify his life and his killing of dozens and dozens of people will debut next year.

The retired pathologist became the scourge of the nation when he embarked on a campaign claiming to kill more than 125 people in assisted suicides.

Kevorkian took advantage of the state of Michigan not having a direct assisted suicide ban and never served a day in jail until he went further by killing a patient.

Kevorkian talked with FOX2 in Detroit about the kind of euthanasia he recommends.

"It’s got to be quick, certain, painless and humane," he says, and he recommends a type of barbiturate that can kill someone in as little as eight seconds.

Kevorkian also told FOX that he would still assist someone in killing himself, even if the person was a close friend like his longtime lawyer and friend Mayer Morganroth.

"If nobody else would (help him), I would," he said. "I would. What can he do to me that’s already happened?"

During the interview, Kevorkian says he contemplated his own suicide while in prison.

"I was going to starve to death," he told FOX 2.

Kevorkian spent most of his time after prison talking about prisoner’s rights and he says in the interview that he has a big project planned that may not be entirely about assisted suicide.

‘Something bigger than rights, or euthanasia. I can’t talk about it until it happens," he said.

Kevorkian wrote a book during his time in prison and the manuscript has been turned into an upcoming HBO movie entitled "You Don’t Know Jack." Al Pacino plays Kevorkian in a role he says he appreciates.

"It’s an honor," Kevorkian said. "He looks exactly like me."

The movie will follow Kevorkian has he constructs his controversial “Mercy Machine,” conducts his first assisted suicide, and begins a media frenzy with legal battles and media manipulation to build support for his crusade.

Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Danny Huston and Brenda Vaccaro also star in the film that will spark a heated debate about how the elderly and disabled are treated.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film will "trace his rise as he builds his infamous ‘Mercy Machine,’ conducts his first assisted suicide, and starts a media frenzy with his epic legal battles."

Adam Mazer is the author of the script, which is loosely based on "Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Assisted Suicide Machine and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia" by Neal Nicol, an acolyte of Kevorkian’s.

Barry Levinson will direct the film, according to the Hollywood web site, and Steven L. Jones, Lydia Dean Pilcher and Glenn Rigberg will be the executive producers.

Bioethics attorney Wesley J. Smith isn’t enthused about the new movie.

"The culture of death is being pushed from many quarters, perhaps most harmfully by the purveyors of popular culture," he says.

"Jack Kevorkian assisted the suicides of at least 130 people–most of whom were not terminally ill and five of whom were not sick according to autopsies–and murdered one," Smith adds. "He ripped out the kidneys of one of his victims after death, that of a former cop who had become quadriplegic from a gunshot wound."

Smith says Kevorkian’s ultimate goal was "obitiatry," which is the experimenting on living human beings before they were euthanized.

"But none of that mattered or matters. And now, he is going to be celebrated in a puff movie," Smith says. "You could not get a more ghoulish, solipsist public figure than Kevorkian. Yet, he is to be beatified, Hollywood style. Color me absolutely disgusted."

In a speech last year at the University of Florida, Kevorkian said he killed about 20 percent of the people who came to him and asked him for his help in taking their lives.

"My aim in helping the patient was not to cause death," he said.

Kevorkian was released from prison in 2007 on parole after spending eight years behind bars in the intentional killing of Thomas Youk in 1998. Youk’s euthanasia death was shown on national television and Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder.

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