Well read in philosophy and history, he cited Aristotle, Sir Thomas More and Pliny the Elder in his arguments for why people should have the right to die with dignity. In a June interview with Reuters Television, the right-to-die activist said he was afraid of death as much as anyone else and said the world had a hypocritical attitude toward voluntary euthanasia, or assisted suicide.
Doctor-assisted suicide essentially became law in Oregon in and in Washington state in The practice of doctors writing prescriptions to help terminally ill patients kill themselves was ultimately upheld as legal by the U.
Supreme Court. His career was interrupted by the Korean War, when he served 15 months as an Army medical officer. His new crusade for assisted suicide, or euthanasia, became an extension of his campaign for medical experiments on the dying. Kevorkian began writing new articles, this time about the benefits of euthanasia. The Thanatron consisted of three bottles that delivered successive doses of fluids: first a saline solution, followed by a painkiller and, finally, a fatal dose of the poison potassium chloride.
Using Kevorkian's design, patients who were ill could even administer the lethal dose of poison themselves. After years of rejection from national medical journals and media outlets, Kevorkian would finally become the focus of national attention for his machine and his proposal to set up a franchise of "obitoriums," where doctors could help the terminally ill end their lives. But Kevorkian would become infamous in , when he assisted in the suicide of Janet Adkins, a year-old Alzheimer's patient from Michigan.
Adkins was a member of the Hemlock Society -- an organization that advocates voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill patients -- before she became ill.
After she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Adkins began searching for someone to end her life before the degenerative disease took full effect. She had heard through the media about Kevorkian's invention of a "suicide machine," and contacted Kevorkian about using the invention on her.
Kevorkian agreed to assist her in a public park, inside his Volkswagen van. Kevorkian attached the IV, and Adkins administered her own painkiller and then the poison. Within five minutes, Adkins died of heart failure. When the news hit media outlets, Kevorkian became a national celebrity -- and criminal. The State of Michigan immediately charged Kevorkian with Adkins' murder. The case was later dismissed, however, due to Michigan's indecisive stance on assisted suicide.
In early , a Michigan judge issued an injunction barring Kevorkian's use of the suicide machine. That same year, Michigan suspended Jack Kevorkian's medical license, but this didn't stop the doctor from continuing to assist with suicides.
Unable to gather the medications needed to use the Thanatron, Kevorkian assembled a new machine, called the Mercitron, which delivered carbon monoxide through a gas mask. The following year, the Michigan Legislature passed a bill outlawing assisted suicide, designed specifically to stop Kevorkian's assisted suicide campaign. As a result, Kevorkian was jailed twice that year. He was bailed out by lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, who helped Kevorkian escape conviction by successfully arguing that a person may not be found guilty of criminally assisting a suicide if they administered medication with the "intent to relieve pain and suffering," even it if did increase the risk of death.
Kevorkian was prosecuted a total of four times in Michigan for assisted suicides -- he was acquitted in three of the cases, and a mistrial was declared in the fourth. Kevorkian was disappointed, telling reporters that he wanted to be imprisoned in order to shed light on the hypocrisy and corruption of society.
They also closed the loophole that allowed for Kevorkian's previous acquittals. Yet Kevorkian continued to assist patients.
Meanwhile, the courts continued to pursue Kevorkian on criminal charges. Not one to stand down from a challenge, Kevorkian pursued his crusade with even greater passion in That year, he allowed the CBS television news program 60 Minutes to air a tape he'd made of the lethal injection of Thomas Youk. Youk suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease and had requested Kevorkian's help.
It's a rare human being who has the courage of his convictions, and is strong enough to stand up against the never-ending threats and attacks of the most powerful figures of our society. Pacino paid tribute during his Emmy acceptance speech, calling Kevorkian "brilliant, interesting and unique".
This article is more than 10 years old. Controversial pathologist's rise to fame in s led to national debate in the US over assisted suicide. Jack Kevorkian, better known as 'Dr Death', has died aged 83 in hospital in Detroit. Topics Jack Kevorkian news. Death," Kevorkian catapulted into public consciousness in when he used his homemade "suicide machine" in his rusted Volkswagen van to inject lethal drugs into an Alzheimer's patient who sought his help in dying.
For nearly a decade, he escaped authorities' efforts to stop him. His first four trials, all on assisted suicide charges, resulted in three acquittals and one mistrial.
Murder charges in earlier cases were thrown out because Michigan at the time had no law against assisted suicide; the Legislature wrote one in response to Kevorkian. He also was stripped of his medical license. People who died with his help suffered from cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, multiple sclerosis, paralysis. They died in their homes, an office, a Detroit island park, a remote cabin, the back of Kevorkian's van.
Kevorkian likened himself to Martin Luther King and Gandhi and called prosecutors Nazis, his critics religious fanatics. He burned state orders against him, showed up at court in costume, called doctors who didn't support him "hypocritic oafs" and challenged authorities to stop him or make his actions legal.
This is something I would want. Devotees filled courtrooms wearing "I Back Jack" buttons. But critics questioned his publicity-grabbing methods, aided by his flamboyant attorney Geoffrey Fieger until the two parted ways before his trial.
Even so, few states have approved physician-assisted suicide. Laws went into effect in Oregon in and Washington state in , and a Montana Supreme Court ruling effectively legalized the practice in that state. Kevorkian expresses regret In a rare televised interview from prison in , Kevorkian told msnbc he regretted "a little" the actions that put him there.
And my only regret was not having done it through the legal system, through legislation, possibly," he said. Kevorkian's ultimate goal was to establish "obitoriums" where people would go to die.
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