North Country Gazette, NY
July 28 2007
Phone Campaign Underway To Protest Kevorkian
Posted on Saturday, 28 of July , 2007 at 8:05 pm
GAINESVILLE, FL – A campaign to generate thousands of phone calls to
protest the appearance of Jack `Dr. Death’ Kevorkian at the
University of Florida has been initiated by the Flint Right To Life
organization in Flint, Mich.
Kevorkian has reportedly accepted a speaking engagement on Oct. 11
for a $50,000 fee, sponsored by Accent, a student government funded
speaker’s bureau at the university. However, the college
communications department said last week that no contract has yet
been signed with Kevorkian.
The program will reportedly be funded by student activity funds and
special fees.
Kevorkian, 79, was released on parole from a Michigan state prison
after serving eight years of a 10 to 25 year sentence for second
degree murder. He had been convicted in April 1999 for the 1998
poisoning of Thomas Youk, 52, a Michigan man afflicted with Lou
Gehrig’s disease.
Kevorkian had fatally injected drugs in Youk, taping the procedure
which was later shown on `60 Minutes’, claiming it was euthanasia or
mercy killing but the jury said it was murder. The airing of the tape
led to his arrest. Despite repeated efforts by prosecutors to send
him to prison, was convicted only for the Youk death.
Although claiming that he’s not advocating assisted suicide, he says
that doctors should be allowed to administer drugs to end a patient’s
life if the patient is too disabled to do it himself. Suicide is
illegal and Oregon is the only state that has passed legislation that
allows doctor to assist the terminally ill to end their lives if the
patient too disabled to do it themselves. However, there’s a real
issue about mental competency.
During an interview in Michigan within days after his release,
Kevorkian announced his new `mission’ to educate and inform the
masses about their rights as citizens. As part of his parole,
Kevorkian cannot advocate assisted suicide so he’s engaging in what
can only be called doublespeak saying that his NEW mission `is not
assisted suicide. My work is effectively done there’, he says.
`I’ll do what I can to have it legalized’.
He cannot leave the state of Michigan without approval of the
Michigan Parole Board.
Judy Climer, president of Flint Right to Life, is urging that phone
calls be made to University of Florida president James Machen at
352-392-1311 ( [email protected] )
and the Annual Giving Office at 1-800-279-6796 to `object to the
taxpayers of Florida dollars being used to pay for Jack Kevorkian to
speak to the student body on Oct. 11′.
Calls can also be placed to the Accent Speech Bureau at 352-392-1665
ext. 306. Their fax is 352-392-8072. Their website
is not currently on line. Email:
[email protected]
Although The North Country Gazette could not establish that taxpayer
funds are involved, Ms. Climer said that she was told that the monies
the students use to pay him from partially from state monies and
perhaps federal monies.
`Though it is not in Michigan, it will ripple across America and our
students deserve better than Jack Kevorkian’, Ms. Climer said.
`There’s enough violence hitting our campuses without adding Dr.
Death and his message’.
Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schindler Schiavo, the brain
injured woman who died in March 2005, after her feeding tube was
removed by court order at the behest of her husband, is asking people
to sign a petition directed at the university asking them to withdraw
their invitation to Kevorkian, to stop him from targeting college
students.
`We’re sending this message to our young people that the answer to
human suffering and the chronically ill is to kill. That’s extremely
dangerous and troubling’, Schindler said. `Join us in telling the
president of the University of Florida that it is unacceptable to
invite Jack Kevorkian to spread his message of death and violence to
the campus’.
`Not surprisingly, our mainstream media has already begun to help the
`doctor’ use his `plight’ as a reason to promote the legalization of
assisted suicide – allegedly for the terminally ill – even though we
know that many of his victims suffered only for depression’, the
Foundation says in circulating a petition to the UF administration.
To sign the petition, click on Say No to Dr. Death Petition.
`This is the same University of Florida where Judge George Greer (who
issued the Schiavo death order) attended school. It is also where
bio-ethicist Bill Allen teaches – the same Bill Allen who said in an
interview that he believed that (Terri Schiavo) was not a person’,
Schindler said.
Kevorkian was in prison when Terri Schiavo died due to premeditated
dehydration as a result of more than 10 years of efforts by Michael
Schiavo to kill his wife. Kevorkian had stated in a prison interview
that he would have killed Terri had her husband asked him to do so.
7-28-07