Baltimore Doctor Helps The Ill Commit Suicide

Dr. Lawrence Egbert has been dubbed "The New Doctor Death"

 

From a cluttered Baltimore apartment office, Dr. Lawrence Egbert says he has helped direct the deaths of nearly 300 people across the country.

Some of his patients, as he calls them, are racked with cancer, paralyzed or staring down Alzheimer's. Others simply want to slip away on their own terms. Sometimes family members gather around the bedside to say goodbye; in other cases, their appointed "exit guides" lock the door behind them and make arrangements for someone to stumble across the body.

A decade after Jack Kevorkian went to prison for helping a man with Lou Gehrig's disease commit suicide, Egbert, 83, has been dubbed "The New Doctor Death" by Newsweek after being criminally charged in two states for his role as medical director for the Final Exit Network. An Arizona jury acquitted him last month following a three-week trial in the death of a Phoenix woman. He has also been charged in Georgia.

The cases have revived the debate over assisted suicide and placed Egbert, a retired anesthesiologist, at the forefront of the debate over Americans' right to take their own lives. The Final Exit Network is the only known group performing such work, and members say their assistance is compassionate and progressive. Prosecutors call them "killers." Even other right-to-die advocates, including Kevorkian himself, disagree with their methods.

Amid the controversy, Egbert has been dismissed from his role teaching classes at the Johns Hopkins University and has had a falling-out with his church. After snapping his pelvis in a bicycle accident, he even contemplated taking his own life. But should he prevail in his pending case in Georgia, Egbert said, he'll resume his work with the Final Exit Network.

"I never thought of myself as having done anything that I should feel guilty of," said the Hampden resident. "I don't feel any conflict about helping someone stop suffering."

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