This is one of those weeks I used to look forward to ten years ago. But back then, I could go three days on intense work and little sleep before it would start to catch up with me.
Kevorkian is getting out of prison tomorrow. No surprise. He's served his minimum and his parole was pretty inevitable.
The press coverage has already been alarming in the way the old misinformation keeps being recycled. The worst, though, has come from the Associated Press. They conducted a poll and then wrote widely-distributed story about the results. At least one of the questions is total garbage, which invalidates the answers.
Disability Activists Demand Retraction and Correction from Associated Press AP-Ipsos Poll Question Inaccurate and Misleading
Disability activists have demanded corrective action from the Associated Press after the release of poll data just three days prior to the parole of Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian has served 8 years on a second-degree murder conviction for his killing of Thomas Youk by lethal injection.
According to a widely-distributed AP story announcing the results, 53% of the respondents disagreed with Kevorkian's incarceration.
According to disability activists who have followed Kevorkian's career closely, the results are highly suspect since the question they were given misled them in regard to the nature of Kevorkian's crime and the characteristics of his overall “body count.”
According to the AP, the survey asked the following question:
“Do you think that Michigan doctor Jack Kevorkian should have been jailed for assisting terminally ill people end their own life, or not?”
“This question misinforms the respondent about the nature of the crime Kevorkian was convicted of and also mischaracterizes the health status of the majority of people who died at his hands. As anyone who watched the 60 Minutes telecast knows, Kevorkian directly injected lethal chemicals into Thomas Youk. This is not ‘assistance’,” says Stephen Drake, Not Dead Yet's research analyst. “Further, the word 'people' is paired with 'terminally ill', indicating that the majority of his body count consisted of people who were close to death. Beginning with the Detroit Free Press series 'The Suicide Machine' in 1997, there is overwhelming documentation that the majority of people who went to Kevorkian had non-lethal chronic conditions and disabilities.
Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet, personally contacted Trevor Thompson, the AP's Manager of News Surveys, to demand a retraction and correction.
“Mr. Thompson eventually agreed the question didn't jive with the facts of Kevorkian's career or conviction, but rejected any corrective action after consulting with the DC Bureau Chief, Sandy Johnson. Johnson claimed that the story about the poll was accurate, disregarding their responsibility for contaminating their poll with a misleading question.”
Carol Gill, Ph.D., agrees with the concerns of Not Dead Yet. "All good survey designers know that misleading questions produce invalid results. When participants are asked to respond to inaccurate and confusing items, the result is spoiled data. Unfortunately, this poll contained flawed questions. It's impossible to base sound conclusions on these results." Professor Gill is a research psychologist and associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Drake adds that the refusal of Thompson and Johnson to address the misinformation in their poll is a violation of the AP's public “Statement on Values and Principles,” which calls for swift and comprehensive corrective action when they publish erroneous information.
“This is worse than the usual error,” says Drake. “In this case, they created news in the form of a survey and then reported on it. Instead of simply reporting misinformation, they have created it in a way that superficially resembles scientific sampling. They have knowingly polluted the public discussion about an important public policy topic. And they are refusing to take responsibility for it.”
(I got both these links directly from the AP site - yesterday they gave me links to a different newspaper. It might be a random thing that I don't have the time or curiosity to check out.)
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I must say, "Kevorkian getting out" did not give me associations to getting out of prison. Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I must say, "Kevorkian getting out" did not give me associations to getting out of prison.
*snort* Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
Well, KoM, Kevorkian has always thought "getting out" - permanently - was better for others than for him. In 1993, he was arrested on an assisted suicide charge and held in lieu of a $50,000 bond. He went on a hunger strike and rather than having to deal with mass public sympathy if they force-fed him, he was released from custody.
In 1999, when he was approaching trial in the direct killing death of Thomas Youk, he announced that he would starve himself if they put him in prison.
Kevorkian *did* end up in prison. Obviously, he didn't starve himself. Turns out that he hadn't known the regulations for prisoners had changed since 1993. If Kevorkian had *really* wanted to starve and die, they would have let him.
Suddenly, he was no longer interested in starving himself to death. Posted by Zamphyr (Member # 6213) on :
He's also in poor health, hepatitis C......physician, heal thyself.
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
Zamphyr,
Lots of people have hep c and manage for a long time with few or no symptoms.
Don't be surprised if the Kevorkian you see on TV in the coming weeks is more vigorous than you've been led to believe.
His lawyer has been filing appeals for early release every year for the last 4 years. In each case, he claimed that Kevorkian was "terminally ill" with "less than a year to live."
Naturally, the State of Michigan couldn't say anything about the confidential medical records of a prisoner...
But making that claim so many years in a row makes me think they're somewhat exaggerated.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:physician, heal thyself
That's not what Kevorkian does.
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:physician, heal thyself
That's not what Kevorkian does.
Um, perhaps that was the joke.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Hey, PC. You registered five years ago today.
Posted by RunningBear (Member # 8477) on :
He should move to oregon. Its legal.
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
Actually, I registered in September of 2001 under a different alias. These days, I don't feel close enough to this community to make a big deal about being here for half a decade.
Posted by sndrake (Member # 4941) on :
quote: He should move to oregon. Its legal.
Runningbear,
Depends what you mean by "it."
*None of the means Kevorkian used are legal in Oregon.
*Between 65 and 75 percent of his body count didn't fit Oregon's definition of "terminally ill" or just about any conventional definition of the term.
*To top it off, he's a pathologist - and his license to practice was revoked a long time ago. Even when he had a license he wasn't qualified to be dealing with living people with any kind of medical issue.
(Have a fondness for factual accuracy)
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Everyone in Michigan knows what "Kevorkian's Getting Out" means. It's all most people have talked about at work for the last few days.
I don't like the way he operated, I think he deserved to be in jail, and I wish he was still there. That's not a statement against assisted suicide, I think what Oregon has in place right now is a much more humane and safe approach, and what Oregon and Kevorkian did isn't nearly the same thing.
Posted by the doctor (Member # 6789) on :
I read a statement that he intends to go on speaking engagements and "not do anything illegal."
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