NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      DETROIT (CWNews.com) - Assisted suicide activist Jack Kevorkian thumbed his nose at Michigan's new law banning assisted suicides on Friday by releasing a videotape of an assisted suicide to the media.

      The tape, shown last night on the CBS news show 60 Minutes, depicted Kevorkian giving a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, 52, of Waterford Township, Michigan on September 17. Youk suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, or amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and was unable to pull a string to start the injections himself as Kevorkian's "death machine" had usually worked. Instead, Kevorkian said he inserted the needles and injected Youk himself.

      "We need active euthanasia. There are patients who just can't do this for themselves," Kevorkian told the Oakland Press newspaper. "From now on I'm doing them all that way -- it is faster, cleaner and easier." He also acknowledged helping "well over 130" people kill themselves since 1990. He said he released the videotape to cause a showdown with the government.

      Kevorkian has been acquitted three times of assisted suicide charges, but the state passed a new law this year, specifically defining the law to include Kevorkian's actions. The lawyer who represented Kevorkian in those trials, Geoffrey Fieger, said he is not representing the retired pathologist in his latest campaign, and said Kevorkian "is out there alone ... in uncharted territory."