The Last Kevorkorium: Rights and Responsibilities at Death's Door

I am writing to alert you to a secret plan of the National Health Board to eliminate the country's last remaining kevorkorium, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park's Lava Flow Rest. Until we at the National Ethics Action Tabernacle (NEAT) learned of it, the president was to have announced the closing in her annual State of Health address to Congress. Lava Flow Rest is a unique and sustainable technological wonder that embodies all six primary American ethical values: security, simplicity, choice, savings, responsibility, and quality. Every year, as thousands of responsible citizens pass through its front door, their friends and family testify to its quality service. Sam Frugal of Kona says, "We thought our grandaunt would never die. But the friendly staff at Lava Flow helped her to see her duty and choose a simple way to die with dignity." At Lava Flow customers choose from a variety of end-of-life experiences, including gas, hanging, lethal injection, and gunshot--all responsibly self-administered in a relaxed and dignified setting. Wild card choices, where the staff surprises the guest with a novel method, are also available. And Lava Flow does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, age, gender, sexual preference, or disability. Why We Need the Lava Flow Kevorkorium It has been argued that because all national health care physicians are now licensed to kill their patients painlessly upon request, Kevorkoria are no longer necessary. That is why twenty-four of the twenty-five located in our national parks have closed. But this argument misses an important point. Yes, all Americans now have the right to die because all national health care physicians have an obligation to provide them with lethal pills or injections upon request--but the medicalization and legalization of suicide has undercut autonomy and made death insufficiently dramatic. Kevorkoria were designed to permit people to ponder their mortality, to engage in a dialog with the nation's leading bioethicists, and to be provided with an atmosphere in which one could commit suicide with dignity, like Socrates. Kevorkoria prevent the cheapening of life by preventing the cheapening of death. Outside the Kevorkoria suicide is no longer a deeply personal act--it is a communal act. Families encourage their loved ones to take advantage of the physician's needle to avoid a long and lingering death. Communities give good citizen awards for those families who volunteer their demented loved ones for substituted-judgment suicide. How Did Kevorkoria Start? kevorkoria were developed by a successful fastfood franchiser turned medical entrepreneur, Donald Ronald. In 1974 Don was inspired by an important article in Harper's to set up the world's first bioemporium near an off-shore medical school in Grenada. The U.S. invasion of the island forced him to abandon his neomorts and to close down his lucrative human organ shopping center, but Don's commitment to medicine continued. He dabbled in cryonics for awhile, and later, after he met the famous patient rights pioneer Jack Kevorkian, promoted the harvesting of organs from condemned prisoners. …