In every case, proper treatment of the patient's pain, accompanied by emotional support and occasionally antidepressants resulted in reversal of the wish to be killed. The encounter between Kevorkian and his victim was a simulacrum of a genuine medical interview. When Kevorkian asked the victim whether or not he had been experiencing pain, it was not with the intent to find a better medicine to treat it. It was to justify the use of the carbon monoxide he had obtained even before meeting him. When Kevorkian asked about the victim's anguish and wish to die, it was not to assess or relieve the obvious depression.
Consent is the key issue for euthanasiasts, for only consent separates euthanasia from homicide.
The tacit, if not explicit, assumption of euthanasiasts is that suicide is a rational choice for those with advanced illness or disability. When life no longer yields adequate pleasure, they argue, it should be the individual's right to end that life, and society's duty to provide him assistance in doing so. Thus the desire to commit suicide, which psychiatrists worldwide recognize as one of the diagnostic criteria of a major mood disorder, is interpreted by the euthanasiast as a civil liberty that must be honored. Yet this assumption of the rationality of suicide flies in the face of decades of research into suicide and its risk factors. Study after study has shown that the vast majority of cancer patients who commit suicide or seek assistance in suicide are in fact clinically depressed.