Showdown For Doctor Death

Dr. Jack Kevorkian's televised killing of Thomas Youk, 52, on 60 Minutes last week had the familiar dramatic arc of an infomercial. Act I presents the vexing problem--baldness, cellulite or, in this case, Youk's advanced-stage Lou Gehrig's disease. In Act II the host touts a miracle solution--hair transplants, Taekwondo or a shot of heart-stopping potassium chloride. In the final act come the gushing testimonials. Youk couldn't play the role of satisfied customer himself--by Act III he was dead--but his wife Melody stepped in. "I don't consider it murder," she told the viewers at home. "I consider it humane."

After centuries of bad p.r., Death has a media strategy. And its chief spin doctor is named Kevorkian. He's too demonic to be an ideal pitchman. When he bent over Youk with a syringe and asked, "Sleepy, Tom?," the image was bloodcurdling. But he has an unerring sense of what excites journalists--and incites prosecutors. Three days after the 60 Minutes story aired on CBS, Kevorkian got what he had explicitly wished for: he was charged with first-degree murder. Though he has been acquitted three times of helping patients end their life, this time he crossed a significant line: he administered the lethal injection himself. And thus Kevorkian has single-handedly moved the national debate over the right to die a wrenching step farther: from doctor-assisted suicide to mercy killing.

The televised death of Youk, a vintage-car restorer from Waterford Township, Mich., set off a round of finger pointing over the motives behind the performance. Oakland County prosecutor David Gorcyca, who filed the murder charges last Wednesday, accused Kevorkian of airing the video to satisfy his "attention-starved ego." CBS, meanwhile, faced accusations of exploiting the death for ratings. The segment did help boost the show's numbers--the household rating was up 20% over the season average--during the critical fall sweeps period, which sets local advertising rates. Don Hewitt, 60 Minutes' executive producer, insisted his show wasn't pandering for ratings. "I have a low threshold for discomfort, and I was not made uncomfortable by the moment of death," he says. "I didn't see anybody writhing in agony. I didn't see anything that would make me turn my face away." With euthanasia being so hotly debated, he adds, "the story we put on the air, exactly as we told it, was a fit and proper one for 60 Minutes."

The video gave ammunition to both sides in the debate. "This was a very ill man dying a gentle, peaceful death in the time and manner he requested," says Faye Girsh, executive director of the Hemlock Society USA, a group that promotes physician help in dying. "I think we should see more people dying this way." Opponents saw it differently. "I certainly didn't see any compassion," says Ned McGrath, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit. "His last moment on earth, and he's left in a room with Jack Kevorkian and a video camera. What a horrible way to leave the world." Critics say that since Kevorkian made the video himself, it is impossible to know precisely how sick Youk was and what he knew when he consented.