| Dr. Death Rides Again By Mark Morelli, The Realist Michigan doctor Jack Kevorkian's assistance in more than two dozen suicides has prompted debate over whether he is playing God. What hasn't been examined, until now, is Kevorkian's influence on the world of free enterprise. Marty Formby always wanted to open his own business. Kevorkian's philosophy made Marty Formby's dream come true. In his business, called The Gambler's God, Formby utilizes a sucide machine similr to Kvorkian's -- only Formby's patients aren't sick. "But they are scared shitless," Formby says. "Used to be, when a guy gambled himself away up to his eye-teeth, he had to play up or get an insane loan from a shark--then he'd have that to pay off." Formby, a former casino card dealer who is just 66 college credits short of a biology degree, carefully screen people who have bet -- and lost -- much more than they can afford. "It's much easier for them to check out peacefully here than to face the other music, which ain't harps, if you get what I mean." Formby, whose business thrives in Atlantic City, is looking to lease office space in Las Vegas and hopes to create a mobile euthanasia unit to povide monthly service for terribly unlucky gamblers in Reno, and also for those reluctant people dragged along on bus tours to Branson, Missouri. Copycat euthanasians consider themselve unoffiical branch representatives of Kevorkian's. But without the infamous doctor's presence, and their own lack of crednetials, they must often rely on gimmicks. Danny Menning, a Fon du Lac landscaper, used to spend his cold Wisconsin winters collecting meager unemployment checks and unsuccessfullydealing with his unusually long bout of grief over the death of Lucille Ball. "Like others with terminal Lucy grief, I hit lower than bottom. I did a little reading on how to end it all, found out about this Kevorkian guy, miexed in a little American know-how, and here I am." He spends half the year operating Breath 'N Death, and claims to provide better service than Kevorkian himself. "I have to. Because I don't have a medical degree, I compensate with better prices. And because I don't have a high school degree, I keep things simple. Plus, I have a sliding scale." Depending on what people can afford, Menning charges up to $5,000 for h elping administer his own painless suicide machine ("It's like jumping a battery"), to as little as $25 to assist in guiding a plastic grocery bag over the patient's head. Menning saves those bags for just that purpose -- and throws them in for free. "This machine don't run on pen light batteries," Menning says. "But I hardly use it. Most rich people I know is hapy, which ia also good because happy rich folks like nice lawns. But when it comes to real despair, where you wish you wasn't born, poor folks is my mother lode." The biggest surprise is that the Kevorkian debate caused the tobacco industry to reconsider its philosophy. now, after insisting for three decades that the Surgeon General has been wrong, they admit smoking is dangerous and often fatal. Spokesman tony Locust said that the tobacco industry has "turned over a new leaf" and will devote its energy to making the American quality of life better. And for thos whose quality of life is not so good? The industry has adopted a Kevorkian-like good will policy that provides a better alternative. "When we finally decided that smoking was bad," Locust says, "I immediately quit a two-pack-a-day habit. Why? I didn't want to kill myself. I've got a good job, a nice home, a place on the beach, good-looking kids. I've got things to live for." He turns grim. "But not everyone does. Look at the inner city, where kids are born doomed." The tobacco industry wants to distributre cigarettes on America's urban playgrounds --the first year absolutely free. Locust explains: "It doesn't solve the problem, but at least it initiates the suicide, albeit a slow-motion one, so that once these kids grow up and see the degradation, the hopelessness, the despair, the imablanced society that seals them off from opportunity and makes their life a living hell . . . well, they'll already be dying. That cough, that speck on the lungs, will be their ticket to Jericho." But what about those children in the progjrects who di have loving prarents and guidance, who will overcome the odds, get educations and be productive citizens? Locust contends that their nicotine addiction will be just another one of the many challenges they face, challenges they're accustomed to. "Kicking cigarettes will give them yet another sense of accomplishment. These triumphs only contribute to their self-esteem." Next in our series: Is Jack Kevorkian obliged to arrange for the kidnapping and asssited suicide of Pete Townshend, a musician who has gone on record as hoping to die before he gets old? |
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