If Derek Humphry and his growing number of followers have their way, doctors could play a new role in our culture. In addition to fighting disease and providing care, they could end lives-on purpose. They could inject patients with lethal doses of drugs and stand by while the drugs take effect, making certain that the patient dies comfortably.
Humphry, founder of the National Hemlock Society, believes in active euthanasia-the mercy killing of people suffering the final stages of painful terminal illnesses. It is understandable that some people believe active euthanasia is a euphemism for murder-and that Humphry is a murderer.
Western culture has almost always viewed death as an enemy and has waged a vigorous war against it. Not surprisingly, we have only postponed the inevitable. With advanced surgical techniques, modern machines, medicines and nutrition, life expectancy has increased 40 percent in the past three generations.
There is, however, a price to be paid for longer lives-and often that price is a longer death. Nearly 2,000,000 Americans die each year of terminal illnesses. Many deaths are painful, and sometimes dying people spend their last months-or even years-in hospitals or nursing homes, barely conscious. Until recently, it has been illegal for doctors to allow patients to die, even if the patients demanded it.
Slowly, those laws have changed. Many states now allow passive euthanasia-the withholding of medical treatment and life-support machines when death is imminent-if the patient has made clear his or her desire beforehand in writing, through a document called a living will. The American Hospital Association now estimates that 70 percent of the 6000 daily deaths in the United States are "somehow timed or negotiated, with all concerned parties privately concurring on withdrawal of some death-delaying technology or not even starting it in the first place."
Active euthanasia is another matter, both legally and morally. A loved one or a doctor who actively assists a person in dying, even at the patient's request, is guilty of a felony.
Derek Humphry is attempting to change that. Humphry, who grew up in a broken home in Bath, Somerset, about 90 miles from London, was writing muckraking articles and books on racism and politics when his wife of 22 years contracted a progressively debilitating form of cancer. After doctors told Jean Humphry that she had no chance of surviving, she asked her husband to help her end her life, claiming she wanted to avoid a protracted and painful death.
In late 1975, at her request, Humphry handed his wife a cup of sweetened coffee in which he had stirred a mixture of codeine and Seconal. An hour later she was dead.
No one but the family and a few close friends knew the truth about Jean's death until three years later, when Humphry released "Jean's Way," a memoir he had written with his second wife, Ann Wickett Humphry. The book told, in candid and moving detail, about Jean's decision to commit suicide. It also revealed Humphry's complicity in her death.
"Jean's Way" touched, a nerve. The story had universal implications. There were, apparently, hundreds of thousands of people who, like Jean, believed that an assisted suicide was the compassionate answer to a long and arduous death. Many of them wanted the option for themselves.
As a result, Humphry founded the Hemlock Society in 1980. The society is famous for two things: working to change laws so that doctors can legally help terminally ill patients commit suicide and giving advice to people who have decided to die on their own, when doctors can't or won't help.
The Hemlock Society tried to introduce legislation in California and Washington State that would legalize assisted suicide. Fiercely opposed by the Catholic Church, anti-euthanasia groups and former Surgeon General Everett Koop, the measures were defeated.
Another group, Californians Against Human Suffering, is trying again. Californians will vote in November on whether to make it legal for doctors to help terminally ill patients-those who would likely be dead within six months-to kill themselves.
Elsewhere, a controversial Detroit physician named Jack Kevorkian has made some headlines of his own. Unwilling to wait for legislation allowing him to legally help people commit suicide, Dr. Kevorkian-with his suicide machine-has assisted in several deaths over the past few years.
Kevorkian avoided prosecution until early this year when he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for helping two ailing women in Michigan die. Although Kevorkian's fate now rests with the court, he has continued to aid suicides.
As ethicists, physicians and politicians debate the implications of Kevorkian's actions, Humphry remains in the forefront of the euthanasia movement. One of his most recent books is the movement's bible. "Final Exit," released in 1991, is nothing short of the last self-help book you'll ever need. In no-nonsense prose (and also in large type, for elderly readers), the book is a primer that tells readers the best way to kill themselves, including a detailed list of effective drugs and dosages.
The reaction to the book was startling. It flew off bookstore shelves and settled at the top of the best-seller lists. It also caused a new wave of debate on the issue of legalizing assisted suicide. Humphry expounded on the issues in a follow-up released in May, "Dying with Dignity: Understanding Euthanasia," about the emotional and ethical aspects of the assisted-suicide issue.
As if those books were not controversial enough, Humphry's messy personal life became the center of a scandal. Last year, Humphry was publicly accused of being a fraud, an opportunist and, finally, a murderer. What gave the charges impact was that the accuser was neither an anti-euthanasia activist nor a religious zealot but Humphry's ex-wife, Ann (they had divorced the year before).
In People magazine and on TV talk shows, Ann Humphry claimed that her ex-husband was cruel and manipulative. Despite his image as a man who had compassion for the dying, Ann charged that Humphry abandoned her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and that he tried everything he could to convince her to kill herself. Ultimately, Ann did commit suicide, and she saved her most serious accusation for her suicide note. "[Humphry] is a killer. I know," she wrote. She claimed that Humphry lied about the circumstances of his first, wife's death and charged that he had suffocated Jean with a pillow.
Beleaguered by the press, Humphry took out a half-page ad in The New York Times several weeks after Ann's death-ostensibly as a eulogy to his ex-wife. In it he wrote that Ann was "dogged by emotional problems." His attempts to exonerate himself didn't satisfy his critics, however, and some observers felt that Humphry was about to make his final exit-at least professionally.
To cast light on the debate over euthanasia and to unravel Humphry's personal drama that was making the assisted-suicide controversy even murkier, Playboy sent Contributing Editor David Sheffto interview the man at the center of the storm. Here's his report:
"I headed into the interview expecting some sort of monster, as Humphry was described in numerous press accounts. I was particularly bothered by the uncanny number of euthanasia cases he had been involved in. All of us, particularly as we grow older, lose parents and friends-but Humphry had actively assisted in the suicides of three family members, participated in the passive euthanasia of a fourth-and his second wife committed suicide. It was circumstantial evidence, but it was still weird.
"In a series of meetings in San Francisco, where Humphry was consulting with organizers of Californians Against Human Suffering who were pushing for assisted-suicide legislation, and at the Hemlock Society's national headquarters in Oregon, I continued to eye him suspiciously, dissecting his answers, testing his sincerity and looking for holes in his story.
"When his face reddened and he broke down in tears-for the first of several times during the interview-I was distrustful. The emotion seemed genuine, but I feared it was rehearsed. He cried when he talked about his wife, Jean, his brother's death and the hell he had gone through with his second wife, Ann.
"The jury may still be out on some of the charges against Humphry, but my cynicism lessened. I concluded that his tears were genuine and that he was sincerely committed to his mission. But I'm not sure I would want him to be the executor of my living will."
