Activist David Mixner revealed on Monday that during the first decade of the AIDS crisis, he assisted in the deaths of eight people, including his lover of 12 years.
The Daily Beast reports that Mixner, a former adviser to President Clinton, dropped the bomb during his one-man autobiographical stage show, Oh Hell No!, that in the late 1980s he’d been part of an underground euthanasia network who — because of a lack of medical care and government aid — felt compelled to take matters into their own hands.
“AIDS was such a horrendous death,” Mixner says. “Some of those with it knew they did not want to live beyond a certain point. Out of a desire for dignity and honor, they asked their friends to help them die.”
The process? Mixner says he would administer a morphine drip provided by a doctor into a friend’s IV, remove the evidence, and then, with a four- to 12-hour window in which the drug would take effect, inform the person’s loved ones that it was time to come say goodbye. “To me, what I was doing was helping them to die with dignity and love,” he told The Daily Beast. “No one will ever convince me that it is in God’s plan for us to die in extreme pain and suffering.”
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Mixner, 68, who says the others who participated in the mercy killings have all passed away, spoke with attorneys before sharing this story and believes it’s “unlikely” that he will face prosecution for his actions.
