Last Sunday, in a rare moment of clarity, "60 Minutes'" Mike Wallace called it what it was – death by doctor. He was referring to the 1998 death of Thomas Youk at the hands of pathologist Jack Kevorkian.

Kevorkian's 10-25 year sentence for killing Youk ended last Friday in Wallace's jovial embrace. With the help of CBS, Kevorkian didn't waste any time resuming where he left off before being convicted of Youk's murder in 1999.

Thomas Youk's death, on Sept. 17, 1998, was videotaped by Kevorkian and broadcast on "60 Minutes" a few weeks later. The most grisly bit, the actual footage of Youk being killed, his mouth gaping wide as he died, was trotted out last Sunday for another macabre show and tell.

In 1998, the tape's airing was the first time the American public was able to see, comfortable and safe in their living rooms, the killing of a person with a severe disability – by a doctor, no less. The '98 piece clumsily tried to maintain a balance as to whether killing Youk was the right thing to do. The subtle suggestion, however, was that euthanasia might well be appropriate and even desirable in some instances.

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Not much thought was given to how a person with a disability and his loving family was exploited for Kevorkian's propagandistic purposes. For the retired pathologist, it was the perfect euthanasia storm: Youk was suffering, wanted to die, and had asked to be killed; Youk's family was desperate and seemingly without hope, wanting his suffering ended.

Kevorkian had a way to meet everyone's needs, including his own. He knew killing Youk would help him make a larger point in his quest for legitimizing death on demand.

Nobody asked why Kevorkian was so convinced Youk should die just because Youk asked to die and the family thought it was a viable idea. Rather, it seemed as if everyone had decided that poor Tom's life wasn't worth living. Or, as Kevorkian so succinctly noted last Sunday, "But it was a man whose life didn't measure up anymore. You know, David Hume said it, 'No man ever threw away a life while it was worth keeping.'"

True enough. Kevorkian threw it away for him.

Think about it: Putting a person with a disability to death in front of millions of viewers to make a philosophical point. Murder as a loving act – something in everyone's best moral and educational interests. That Kevorkian and CBS did so with such little protest says more about what we think of people with disabilities than we might care to admit.

One can only wonder at what the outcry would have been if, instead of killing a person with a disability, Kevorkian had taped the killing of someone who, in deep despair, had requested euthanasia because he was gay, a person of color, or had been born with blue eyes.

Whatever the case, Kevorkian still insists that at some point, it's OK to view a human being as nothing more than a suffering animal, and we all know what's best for them. In last Sunday's piece, Wallace couldn't help but add his own bias of "killing as caring":

Wallace: You regret helping Tom Youk?

Kevorkian: No, why would I regret that? That's like asking a veterinarian, "Do you regret helping that person's animal?"

Wallace: Well, wait a minute. Tom Youk was a man. And it was a compassionate murder, but you murdered him.

The Youk family agrees – with the compassion angle, I mean. So be it. It was they who loved, cared for and worried over Tom. However, unwittingly, perhaps, they too have become Kevorkian's dupes:

Wallace: And I take it that you would not be sitting here unless you thought it was useful – socially useful – to have this broadcast?

Youk's brother Terry: Absolutely, we were at the end of our rope. We didn't have any options. And if it weren't for Dr. Kevorkian, I'm not sure what we would have done.

There we have it. The sanctioned social usefulness of showing the public that killing a person with a disability is important.

Watch the tape of Thomas Youk dying. Watch and listen most closely to Kevorkian as he goes about his lethal business. You'll find a doctor of antiseptic love, a high priest of ersatz compassion.

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Mark P. Mostert, Ph.D., is director of the Institute for the Study of Disability and Bioethics at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., where he is also professor of special education.