Kevorkian gets 2nd opinion in latest assisted suicide

November 10, 1995
Web posted at: 1:00 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Ed Garsten

PONTIAC, Michigan (CNN) -- Did Dr. Jack Kevorkian help a woman to die who had years to live? The man who performed then autopsy on Patricia Cashman says yes, but an outside expert said Thursday that the 58-year-old woman was indeed terminally ill. (248K AIFF or WAV sound from Kevorkian's appearance on Larry King Live)

Cashman's body was left in a car outside the office of Dr. Kanu Virani, the deputy medical examiner of Oakland County, Michigan, on Wednesday.

"She was nowhere close to terminal at all," Virani said. "There is no metastatic cancer."

Virani's autopsy concluded that Cashman died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and her death was ruled a homicide.

Kevorkian's lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, is willing to bet Virani is wrong, offering the medical examiner $1 million to prove his contention. And Kevorkian, appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" Thursday night, dared the Oakland County prosecutor's office to charge him Cashman's death.

Prosecutors are waiting for Virani's final report before deciding whether to charge Kevorkian.

Fieger provided reporters with copies of some of Cashman's medical records, including reports of a mastectomy three years ago, and a bone-joint exam performed last May 5. That exam, according to Dr. Richard North, showed that Cashman had "an abnormal study consistent with bony metastases" or cancer.

In the discharge summary filed a few days later from the Scripps hospital in Encinitas, California, North concluded that a bone scan revealed the cancer had spread to the skull, spine and ribs.

And Dr. Jeffrey Forman, who reviewed the records for The Associated Press, said that Cashman did have bone cancer, but it wouldn't necessarily have shown up in a routine autopsy.

At the El Dorado Mobile Home Park in San Marcos, where Cashman lived, longtime neighbor Bob Stone said he has no doubt she had cancer.

"Cancer got so bad she couldn't drive anymore," Stone said. "I had to drive her to the hospital."

Cashman's sister, Sherry McDonald, was with her when she died, and said that Cashman "could barely walk."

But Virani insists that the visual examination of Cashman's organs, lungs and lymph nodes showed no spread of the disease.

Fieger said Kevorkian would never have agreed to assist Cashman without overwhelming proof of her condition

"He never operates without substantiation of the medical condition," Fieger said. "He never operates without absolute proof that the disease has destroyed life." (224K AIFF sound or 224K WAV sound)

The prosecutor's office has not decided whether or not to charge Kevorkian in Cashman's death. He already faces four counts of breaking Michigan's ban on assisted suicide.

Virani admits that results from a partial autopsy cannot be conclusive. He plans to examine Cashman's spine and brain next week, and says that if cancer is discovered, he will revise his report.

Kevorkian gets 2nd opinion in latest assisted suicide

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