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311 Jack

The film 'You Don't Know Jack' explores the controversial figure of Jack Kevorkian, who advocated for physician-assisted suicide in the U.S. after witnessing suffering in terminal patients. Kevorkian's motivations stemmed from a desire to relieve pain and conduct medical experiments, but his actions led to legal consequences. The review criticizes the film for its portrayal of these themes and argues against the normalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide, advocating instead for pain management through medical means.

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Мария Хвостова
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47 views2 pages

311 Jack

The film 'You Don't Know Jack' explores the controversial figure of Jack Kevorkian, who advocated for physician-assisted suicide in the U.S. after witnessing suffering in terminal patients. Kevorkian's motivations stemmed from a desire to relieve pain and conduct medical experiments, but his actions led to legal consequences. The review criticizes the film for its portrayal of these themes and argues against the normalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide, advocating instead for pain management through medical means.

Uploaded by

Мария Хвостова
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Review of the film ‘You Don`t Know Jack’

Physician-assisted suicide was permitted in Oregon, 1994 for the first time in the
United States. No sooner than 2008 did other jurisdictions, Washington DC and Montana,
follow suite. In the meantime, ballot initiatives to legalize assisted suicide were defeated in
Main and Michigan. The latter is where Jack Kevorkian decided to administer a lethal
injection to a client, given that active euthanasia was and up until now is prohibited across the
USA.

According to the movie, Jack Kevorkian`s underlying motivation was intricately


linked to his personal experience of watching people - his mother, hospital patients - pass
away in grave sufferings. Jack is shown wanting to grant such people relief out of sheer
sympathy, respect for their individual rights, and principles of humanity. Decent,
compassionate, rebellious, he ends up behind the bars.

According to the biographic evidence, Kevorkian was drawn to medical experiments


on humans, unusually knowledgeable about Nazi and ancient Greek practices. He would seek
consent from prisonners sitting on death row, hospital staff, willing patients to enable him to
perform transplantation, blood transfusion in vivo. Kevorkian is believed to have asserted in
his notes that “the so-called Nuremberg Code and all its derivatives completely ignore the
extraordinary opportunities for terminal experimentation on humans facing imminent and
inevitable death…”. In his view, human experimentation “ought to be” limited to doctors,
but “could include” qualified lay individuals. Having returned from his trip to the
Netherlands in 1987, he began advertising for suicide clients.

According to the interview “60 Minutes Archives: An interview with Dr. Jack
Kevorkian”, his genuine reasoning is quite straightforward (“That’s why I’m fighting, for me.
Now that sounds selfish, and if it helps everybody, so be it”). This statement is corroborated
by yet another extract from personal notes, where Kevorkian expressed himself with utmost
clarity: “I feel it is only decent and fair to explain my ultimate aim…. It is not simply to help
suffering and doomed persons kill themselves — that is merely the first step, an early
distasteful professional obligation (now called medicide) that nobody in his or her right mind
could savor. [W]hat I find most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance
of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first
unpleasant step can help establish… ”

​ All things considered, the film is nothing but a deliberately flattened, insipid copy of
an original story. A speaking name it has, indeed.

I don’t agree with the values and ideas postulated in the film. Death must not be
perceived as an available option by the society. Euthanasia and assisted suicide will give rise
to unbridled crime, in case legalized. The only sustainable legal solution for a suffering
person`s pain alleviation are analgesic drugs prescribed and kept account of by specialized
state medical institutions.

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