09/18/2026
I loved my dog so much that when he was sick and in pain, I had a vet come to my house to give him a painless voyage to doggie heaven. Most people donāt have a problem with that, but when it comes to humans many think you better fu***ng not, or weāll throw your ass in prison, which is what they did to Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
--On This Day in History S**t Went Down: September 17, 1998--
Poor Jack. He just wanted to help people. A pathologist born in Michigan in 1928, he had some odd ideas early in his career about s**t like experimenting on death row inmates (with their permission) and transfusing blood from dead people. These ideas did not catch on. But the āhey Iām in fu***ng agony and itās only going to get worse please let me dieā idea did.
In the late ā80s Dr. Kevorkian put an ad in some Detroit Newspapers offering his services as a physician consultant for ādeath counseling.ā His first client was Janet Adkins in 1990, a 54-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimerās. The location of her death was not the most dignified; it was in the back of Kevorkianās rusty old VW Microbus. Thatās where he plied his trade with most of his assisted su***de clients, using a homemade su***de machine. Sometimes death was delivered via drugs, other times carbon monoxide. For legal reasons, Kevorkian required his clients to trigger their own deaths using the machine, although he hooked them up to it. The first time he used it he was charged with first-degree murder.
The charges were dropped six months later because it turned out Michigan didnāt have any laws against assisted su***de at the time. But the state yanked his medical license and said no more doctoring for you. Still, he kept on, assisting in approximately 130 su***des over the next eight years, earning the moniker āDr. Death.ā Then he pushed too far.
Kevorkian said he wasnāt about causing death, but ending suffering. He was trying to push society to be accepting of medical aid in dying. On September 17, 1998 he assisted in the death of 52-year-old Thomas Youk, who was in the final stages of ALS. Youk gave informed consent, but what was different this time was that Dr. Kevorkian himself flipped the switch. Before that heād been assisting su***des. This time he took the final action causing Youkās death, which is euthanasia. He also videotaped it and allowed the film to be shown on 60 Minutes two months later as a f**k you what you gonna do about it to the government. And the government said weāre gonna lock you the f**k up.
The state had tried and failed to prosecute Kevorkian four times, but this time they had the evidence to convict. He was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison and served eight. He died four years after he was released, at the age of 83. Due in large part to his efforts, many regions now allow assisted su***de for those who are suffering and/or terminally ill.
NOTE: This piece was researched and written by a human, not some bulls**t "ai" plagiarism software.
Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says āf**kā a lot. Get both volumes of ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY S**T WENT DOWN at JamesFell.com/books.
