Prescription: Medicide. The Goodness of Planned Death by Jack Kevorkian (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 167 scious?" "How can mental substances relate to physical ones?"even then, to deflect philosophical thought about consciousness into the distinction between being awake and being asleep may seem not to engage the puzzlement or the wonder that we bring to the issue. Now maybe that puzzlement or wonder needs treatment, hut if so this should he shown. Otherwise we may he left feeling the victim of verbal brilliance, or of linguistic diversion. This, however, is a small quibble, not a substantive problem in a work the size of Hacker's. This is not the sort of hook one picks up to read through, even if one is philosophically sophisticated and earnestly wants to understand Philosophical Investigations. It is, rather, a hook-with its companions in the series-to he consulted, read in, dipped into, sampled, and savored, as an accompaniment to reading Wittgenstein. The exegetical passages are strong, insightful, helpful. Extensive passages in the original German are supplied at key points. Hacker is especially good at displaying thematic flow and continuity through a difficult text. No one, reading Hacker, could fail to see the tight focus on closely related issues that generates Wittgenstein's unorthodox style. It is always clear what he is getting at. So this series is a landmark, a monument in Wittgenstein scholarship. It is an achievement worthy both of its author and of its subject. Serious students of Wittgenstein will need access to these volumes. Hendrix College Conway, Arkansas ]oHN CHURCHILL Prescription: Medicide. The Goodness of Planned Death. By JACK KEVORKIAN. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1991. Pp. 268. Jack Kevorkian's hook Prescription: Medicide defends two main proposals: 1) death row inmates must he allowed to die under anesthesia so that they can donate their organs or undergo an experiment if they choose; 2) the terminally ill must he given the freedom to die by their own hand or another's in the manner described above and for the same reasons. The hook has three main sections corresponding to these proposals: one on capital punishment (pp. 11-158), one on euthanasia (pp. 185end ), and one on the ethical principles supporting his proposals (pp. 159-184). Much of the hook is historical, recounting the genesis of the ideas and what has happened in the attempt to implement them. 168 BOOK REVIEWS The tone is full of energy, enthusiasm, and frustration, the latter giving rise to a host of ad hominems, some fallacious, some not. Jack Kevorkian often dismisses his opponents as 'emotional,' and, like many of us, he understands himself to he rational, logical, and clear-headed. In view of this, one is particularly struck by the crude self-contradictions in his hook. In some cases the contradictions occur within three pages of each other, and there is at least one instance where the contradiction occurs within a single sentence. Because of these inconstancies, the reader will find no coherent theoretical basis for Dr. Kevorkian's proposals. Dr. Kevorkian is an ethical relativist who holds that no action is right or wrong in itself, but right or wrong depending on the circumstances (p. 171). Yet he does not consistently maintain this. For example , he says on p. 188: " From that moment on I was sure that doctor-assisted euthanasia and suicide are and always were ethical, no matter what anyone says or thinks." On the next page he says something no ethical relativist can say: " If, therefore, such conduct was ethical then, it's ethical now. Why the obvious double standard?" On p. 86 with regard to experimenting on those condemned to death he tells us of his " unshakable conviction that what [he] was trying to accomplish was unquestionably right. And it will always he right as long as medicine is practiced and human beings are judicially destroyed." On p. 175 we hear that an ' ideal doctor ' can handle any medical ethical dilemma that might arise " if one essential principle remains uppermost and permanently honored [my emphasis] in [his] ... mind: the highest respect for the personal autonomy or self-determination of the patient ..• Autonomy is paramount...." This same principle is mentioned in several other passages. On p. 29 he writes, " it [experimentation on...