EILEEN SCHENCK
FROM SOMEONE WHO HAS GRIEVED OVER, but not objected to, Kevorkian’s assistance with suicides, I now object. The difference between handing someone a button and saying ““Do what you will,’’ and an outside agent’s pressing the button seems huge and frightening. Did Kevorkian trick us? Is this where he wanted to go all along? Maybe the people who feared that he was just getting his foot in the door were right.
MURRAY K. MCKINSEY
MY FAMILY AND I WERE SHOCKED THAT you included George Delury’s so-called diary as a legitimate event in your historical chronicle of ““Reports From the Euthanasia Front.’’ Delury’s late wife, Myrna Lebov, was my sister. You write that Delury’s book ““describes the couple’s agonizing decision to end her life with a drug overdose.’’ Wrong. My family firmly believes that the decision was Delury’s, not my sister’s, and to that effect we have filed a wrongful-death action against him. Myrna didn’t have a terminal illness; she had multiple sclerosis. She was not in any physical pain, and she was making plans for the future. She told several people that she did not want to die and that she would not change her mind. Delury’s ““diary’’ presents what he wanted for Myrna, not what she wanted for herself. It is his carefully orchestrated alibi. He used it to hide behind the guise of assisted suicide and euthanasia, to conceal what really happened –he will have to defend his actions in our lawsuit. My sister’s death is an example of what can happen if we are not totally vigilant and if we do not have strict safeguards. Delury has done a disservice to both sides of this heart-wrenching issue.
BEVERLY L. SLOANE
