Jack Kevorkian -- In Retrospect

"The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself." John Stuart Mill.

This much-cited and oft-studied quote, from one of the truly Great Thinkers, was the furthest thing on my mind when I heard about Dr. Jack Kevorkian's passing during a recent NPR news summary.

I was tooling northward, somewhere along I-95 in the never-ending bowels of South Carolina, when news of his demise broke.

My initial reaction was rather simplistic: the Mass Media is going to have a Field Day with this story.

After all, Jack Kevorkian was tailor-made for large-print headlines. He came across as a buffoon, the personification of Icabod Crane, wearing his wrinkled suit and gravy-stained, thin tie.

He was also controversial in the extreme -- so controversial that his life and times were a daily flag in the Associated Press' Daily News Digest in the late 1970s.

60-Minutes stalked him for exclusives. The New York Times tagged him for their Top-Ten Interview List.

Whenever and wherever Kevorkian turned up, the press followed him -- on motorcycles rigged with sidecars.

Everyone knew Kevorkian by his nickname: Doctor Death. If Jack was in-town, someone locally was going to punch the Big Check-Out Button.

Kevorkian even went so far as to invent a Rube Goldberg-type apparatus designed to facilitate one's own demise.

This eccentric iconoclast, who defied Statutory Law, Judeo-Christian Ethics, and -- ultimately -- the Conventional Covenants of his day, became headline news because he dared to preach one profoundly existential message:

If and when one suffers from a terminal, pain-wracking illness, one should have the sole and exclusive option to decide whether to take one's own life.

Kevorkian called it "Physician's Assisted Suicide" -- a label that rankled 99.995% of the medical profession.

I can hear the AMA membership even now: "After all, Jack, did you forget that we doctors have invested years of our collective brilliance and learning into ways by which we can cure diseases and restore the ill to health? Aren't we all colleagues in the Noblest Profession Known to Mankind?"

Thus, Kevorkian -- by virtue of his advocacy of the ultimate extistential freedom -- became the American Medical Association's worst Pariah, and Public Relations Nightmare.

We tend to overlook one very important fact -- one even which the mainstream Media chose to ignore:  Jack Kevorkian was a pathologist by training. By the nature of who they are and what they do, pathologists dwell in the professional examination of fatality.

They are trained to identify diseased cells within the body. When their expertise is required, they can determine what causes death.

A typical work day for your average pathologist involves studying biopsies under the a microscope, to see whether or not they can find cancer cells within human tissue. Pathologists also study cadavers, organ by sliced organ, to ascertain the exact cause of death.

The nature of their work compels pathologists to labor in the deep recesses of the health care industry -- in hospital labs and morgues. They are very well-compensated for the important work they perform -- but you'll never find them listed in the Yellow Pages.

While his AMA colleagues plied their skills on behalf of the living, Kevorkian dwelled among the recently-dead. I can only imagine what went through his mind while he performed autopsies and encountered massive, cancer tumors engulfing nerve tissue.

He undoubted developed a few opinions about the agony and pain suffered by the Recently-Departed.

Keep in-mind that Kevorkian made Big News more than 30 years ago. Back in those days, and concurrent with Kevorkian's surge in the headlines, virtually every medical school trained its students in the maxim that pain, in and of itself, was a necessary and important component part of the healing process.

But a back-channel issue was embodied in this question: what can medicine do for that classification of patients who suffer through the final, debilitating, painful, and humiliating stages of  terminal illness?

At least Jack Kevorkian had an answer -- but in the opinion of his professional colleagues, and most of America, it wasn't a very good one for its times.

Then, like magic, something happened: The Kevorkian Media Circus ultimately cast a spotlight on the issue.

Medical schools -- and the profession in-general -- began an intensive examiniation regarding the best methods of pain management.

End-of-life matters became a part of the curriculum and the AMA's DNA.

Kevorkian's noteriety also triggered a national legislative debate concerning a terminal patient's "Right To Die," or if you prefer a cleaner term: "Death With Dignity."

Legislators started to tackle new laws regarding Living Wills, advance directives, health surrogates, do-not-resusitate orders, and a host of other legally-binding avenues one can execute in one's dealings with end-of-life matters.

Today, pain management is a crucial component of cancer treatment, to cite just one disease. Many of our finest medical schools have set up an entire curriculum devoted to the topic.

And if the pain becomes untreatable, and by definition unbearable, one can decide to end life -- ironically, if two or more physicians (depending upon the state) concur that one is beyond hope.

The penultimate irony of this tale?

Jack Kevorkian sat in prison while most of these matters became law.

The ultimate irony?

Jack Kevorkian died of "natural causes" at the age of 83.