PALO ALTO, Calif. - It has been nearly six years since JanetAdkins, a lover of music and mountain climbing, traveled to Michiganfor a back-alley suicide.
Afraid of losing her mind to Alzheimer's disease, the Oregonwoman climbed into a van that Jack Kevorkian had driven to a parknorth of Detroit. There, after saying thank you, she pushed a buttonthat released a lethal drug into her body.
At the time Dr. Jack was an obscure pathologist, aself-described "obitiatrist" who believed in experimenting ondeath-row inmates and who advocated a chain of suicide clinics.Death with dignity was still a matter of "pulling the plug," notassisting suicide.
At that time, too, Gerald Klooster, a California obstetricianand gynecologist, had not yet exhibited the unmistakable signs of thedisease he shared with Janet Adkins.
But in 1993, a small item in a California newspaper reported thatDr. Klooster had become lost and confused on his way home from choirpractice. He was found sitting in his car two days later.
In 1995, his wife Ruth made an appointment with Kevorkian for aNovember "consultation." Before that appointment could be kept, ChipKlooster abducted his father to his home in Michigan and became thefirst son to sue for custody.
Now in some odd symmetry, Jack Kevorkian and Gerald Klooster areboth sharing the legal spotlight.
Dr. Jack is on trial in Michigan -- again -- for his role in thedeath of two more painfully ill men. Dr. Klooster meanwhile is thebewildered subject of a custody dispute between two factions of hisfamily and between two states, Michigan and California, that havetaken opposite sides, each legally claiming him for their own.
He's in a public dispute, as well, between two points of view.Whether the son kidnapped or rescued the father. Whether the elder'srights have been violated or his life has been saved.
In this country, we tend to wrestle with such questions incourt. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "The law is thewitness and external deposit of our moral life." But the questionsraised by Janet Adkins and now again by Gerald Klooster aren't somuch a matter of individual rights and legal wrongs.
They go to questions of belief, to the core of our identity. Tothe center of our ideas about what makes a life -- our life -- worthliving.
There are some 4 million Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer's.That's 4 million Americans who know that they will, sooner or later,lose their minds like a set of keys. If the "I" in identity islocated in the mind, they will become mindless.
This reality casts the issues of death with dignity and evensuicide -- assisted or not -- in a far different framework. How doyou determine your own fate? Should you?
After all, few people want to end life while they can enjoy it.If a person with early Alzheimer's makes a preemptive strike againstthis debilitating disease -- like Janet Adkins -- she will surelylose some good time. But if a person does not make a move, he will-- like Gerald Klooster -- surely lose the ability to decide forhimself.
This cruel disease that takes your self before it takes yourlife offers chilling dilemmas. Do I as person of sound mind have themoral right to decide the fate of the person I would become? I maynot want to live as that person, but that person -- my future self --may want to live.
I know many people who enter into pacts with husbands, children,friends. They promise to help each other end life at a designatedpoint. But could I burden my family with the guilt of assisting inthe death of the stranger in my body? Could I, on the other hand,bear to burden them with taking care of this "other" me?
I don't pretend to know what Dr. Klooster wanted. In testimony,several of his other children said that their father, who had seenhis own mother die of Alzheimer's, talked of ending his life. Butnot "now." He had signed a suicide letter after the diseaseprogressed. But it had been typed by someone else.
The Gerry Klooster who appeared on "60 Minutes" last month nolonger knew where he was living. But asked if he wanted to live, heanswered, "Of course."
What should the appeals court do with Dr. Klooster? Send himhome to California. Every member of his warring family now agrees,in a supreme irony, that he is no longer rational enough to choosesuicide. He is, in the indifferent eyes of the law, safe.
This is the moral fix we are in: A man is sentenced to lifebecause he no longer has enough of that organ of consent -- the brain-- to choose death.
A moral fix, courtesy of Alzheimer's
PALO ALTO, Calif. - It has been nearly six years since JanetAdkins, a lover of music and mountain climbing, traveled to Michiganfor a back-alley suicide.
Afraid of losing her mind to Alzheimer's disease, the Oregonwoman climbed into a van that Jack Kevorkian had driven to a parknorth of Detroit. There, after saying thank you, she pushed a buttonthat released a lethal drug into her body.
At the time Dr. Jack was an obscure pathologist, aself-described "obitiatrist" who believed in experimenting ondeath-row inmates and who advocated a chain of suicide clinics.Death with dignity was still a matter of "pulling the plug," notassisting suicide.
At that time, too, Gerald Klooster, a California obstetricianand gynecologist, had not yet exhibited the unmistakable signs of thedisease he shared with Janet Adkins.
But in 1993, a small item in a California newspaper reported thatDr. Klooster had become lost and confused on his way home from choirpractice. He was found sitting in his car two days later.
In 1995, his wife Ruth made an appointment with Kevorkian for aNovember "consultation." Before that appointment could be kept, ChipKlooster abducted his father to his home in Michigan and became thefirst son to sue for custody.
Now in some odd symmetry, Jack Kevorkian and Gerald Klooster areboth sharing the legal spotlight.
Dr. Jack is on trial in Michigan -- again -- for his role in thedeath of two more painfully ill men. Dr. Klooster meanwhile is thebewildered subject of a custody dispute between two factions of hisfamily and between two states, Michigan and California, that havetaken opposite sides, each legally claiming him for their own.
He's in a public dispute, as well, between two points of view.Whether the son kidnapped or rescued the father. Whether the elder'srights have been violated or his life has been saved.
In this country, we tend to wrestle with such questions incourt. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "The law is thewitness and external deposit of our moral life." But the questionsraised by Janet Adkins and now again by Gerald Klooster aren't somuch a matter of individual rights and legal wrongs.
They go to questions of belief, to the core of our identity. Tothe center of our ideas about what makes a life -- our life -- worthliving.
There are some 4 million Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer's.That's 4 million Americans who know that they will, sooner or later,lose their minds like a set of keys. If the "I" in identity islocated in the mind, they will become mindless.
This reality casts the issues of death with dignity and evensuicide -- assisted or not -- in a far different framework. How doyou determine your own fate? Should you?
After all, few people want to end life while they can enjoy it.If a person with early Alzheimer's makes a preemptive strike againstthis debilitating disease -- like Janet Adkins -- she will surelylose some good time. But if a person does not make a move, he will-- like Gerald Klooster -- surely lose the ability to decide forhimself.
This cruel disease that takes your self before it takes yourlife offers chilling dilemmas. Do I as person of sound mind have themoral right to decide the fate of the person I would become? I maynot want to live as that person, but that person -- my future self --may want to live.
I know many people who enter into pacts with husbands, children,friends. They promise to help each other end life at a designatedpoint. But could I burden my family with the guilt of assisting inthe death of the stranger in my body? Could I, on the other hand,bear to burden them with taking care of this "other" me?
I don't pretend to know what Dr. Klooster wanted. In testimony,several of his other children said that their father, who had seenhis own mother die of Alzheimer's, talked of ending his life. Butnot "now." He had signed a suicide letter after the diseaseprogressed. But it had been typed by someone else.
The Gerry Klooster who appeared on "60 Minutes" last month nolonger knew where he was living. But asked if he wanted to live, heanswered, "Of course."
What should the appeals court do with Dr. Klooster? Send himhome to California. Every member of his warring family now agrees,in a supreme irony, that he is no longer rational enough to choosesuicide. He is, in the indifferent eyes of the law, safe.
This is the moral fix we are in: A man is sentenced to lifebecause he no longer has enough of that organ of consent -- the brain-- to choose death.
