Jack Kevorkian, 83; waged public battle for euthanasia

June 04, 2011|By Keith Schneider, New York Times

Dr. Jack Kevorkian invited and reveled in the publics attention, regardless… (john c. hillery/reuters/file…)

NEW YORK — Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the central figure in the tumultuous national drama surrounding assisted suicide, died yesterday in a Michigan hospital. He was 83 and lived in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

The cause of his death was not immediately known, but local media reported that he had suffered from kidney and respiratory problems and that his condition had been worsening in recent days. His death was confirmed by Geoffrey Fieger, the lawyer who represented him during several of his trials in the 1990s.

Dr. Kevorkian, a medical pathologist, challenged social taboos about disease and dying, willfully defied prosecutors and the courts, actively sought national celebrity, and spent eight years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of the last of the more than 100 terminally ill patients whose lives he helped end.

From June 1990, when he assisted in the first suicide, until March 1999, when he was sentenced to serve 10 to 25 years in a maximum security prison, Dr. Kevorkian was a controversial figure. But his critics and supporters generally agree on this: As a result of his stubborn and often intemperate advocacy for the right of the terminally ill to choose how they die, hospice care has boomed in the United States, and physicians have become more sympathetic to their pain and more willing to prescribe medication to relieve it.

In 1997, Oregon became the first state to enact a statute making it legal for physicians to prescribe lethal medications to help terminally ill patients end their lives. In 2006, the US Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that found that Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act protected a legitimate medical practice.

During the nine years between the law’s passage and the court’s ruling, Dr. Kevorkian’s confrontational strategy consumed thousands of column inches in national newspapers, graced the covers of national magazines, and drew the attention of “60 Minutes’’ and other television news programs. His nickname, Dr. Death, and his self-made suicide machine, which he variously called the Mercitron or the Thanatron, became fodder for late-night television comedians.

Given his obdurate public persona and his delight in flaying medical critics as “hypocritic oafs,’’ Dr. Kevorkian invited and reveled in the public’s attention, regardless of its sting.

The American Medical Association in 1995 called him “a reckless instrument of death’’ who “poses a great threat to the public.’’