Once known in the tabloid newspapers as ”Dr. Death”, the 79-year-old Kevorkian said he will neither assist nor counsel another person seeking to commit suicide, partly because the conditions of his parole stipulate he can do neither -- Kevorkian is not even allowed to be in a home with a loaded weapon.

”Don't blame me. Blame your government for passing the laws (against assisted suicide),” Kevorkian said in a recent interview with The New York Times.

However, he remains a vocal advocate to change federal laws to permit physician-assisted suicide, one of the most controversial forms of so-called ”mercy killing”. His lawyer said that Kevorkian has already been offered upwards of 100,000 dollars for a single speaking engagement.

The potential financial windfall for the now aged ex-con who was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 doesn't seem to excite Kevorkian, whose disgust with Washington over the issue is apparent.

”I said I won't do it again,” he told The Times, ”and it's not even worth doing again by me because it'd be counterproductive to what I'm fighting for. It's up to others. If you people don't want that right, then don't do it.”

”Then let your government trample all over you,” he added. ”If you don't want to do it, it's all right by me, but you don't get me talking about it and going back to that thing called prison.”

According to Geoff Sugerman, a spokesperson for the Oregon-based Death with Dignity National Centre, the state law clearly forbids those who have chosen to end their lives to have any outside help.

”We came up with a very workable system that gave people the right (to end their lives), but also ensured that they took that final step themselves,” Sugerman told IPS.

Oregon's law stipulates that a person must be diagnosed with a terminal illness, be of sound mind, and have less than six months to live. They may request, in writing, a prescription for a lethal dose of medication. The request must be confirmed by two witnesses, one of whom cannot be related to the patient, be entitled to any portion of the patient's estate, be the patient's physician, or be employed by a health care facility caring for the patient.

After the request is made, another doctor must review the patient's medical records and confirm the diagnosis. If the request is approved, the patient must wait at least 15 days and make a second oral request before the prescription is written.

Sugerman noted that most of those who choose to end their lives are in the end stages of cancer and between the ages of 70 and 80.

Though he doesn't agree with Kevorkian's condemnation of Oregon's law on suicide as weak, Sugerman does believe the controversial suicide assister was instrumental in raising awareness of the issue to the national level.

”Kevorkian brought the issue to the forefront of American debate, though our method (in Oregon) is better because the patient maintain control of the process,” he told IPS.

Sugerman and other assisted suicide advocates were hopeful that Vermont and California would join them in legalising the practice at the state level.

Jon Radulovic, a representative of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organisation, said advances in pain medication and other controls make suicide unnecessary and that Kevorkian's advocacy is based in part on outdated information about terminal illness care.

”I think we know more now about pain and pain control than we did when Kevorkian was arrested and put in prison (in 1999),” Radulovic told IPS.

Though it comes as no surprise that the hospice care industry would want to keep legal or assisted suicide laws off the books, physician groups are also adamantly opposed to laws allowing others to help end a patient's suffering or self-induced suicide.

”Physician-assisted suicide should not become part of standard medical care. Its routine practice would raise serious ethical and other concerns, undermining the patient-physician relationship and the trust necessary to sustain both the relationship and the role of the medical profession in society,” said Lois Snyder, director of the American College of Physicians Centre for Ethics and Professionalism, and author of a position paper on the subject published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

”We questioned whether it is medicine's role to give people absolute control over the timing and manner of death,” said Snyder.

That question, it seems, will remain on minds of U.S. citizens for some time to come as Kevorkian and others keep stoking the fire of the assisted suicide debate.

And the U.S. public's ambivalence on the issue appears to reflect world opinion, as well. While many countries in Europe and elsewhere do not specifically prohibit assisted suicide, just three nations in the world have actively legalised the practice: Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Source: IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency