Right-to-die advocate Jack Kevorkian passes away

Jack Kevorkian, a controversial American Pathologist known as 'Dr Death' for his efforts to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in the United States, has died in a Detroit area hospital following a short illness at the age of 83.

Kevorkian died on Friday after being hospitalised at William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan since May with pneumonia and kidney problems.

Kevorkian became an international talking point in the 1990s, when in contravention of United States law he began using a home-made "suicide machine" to help sufferers of severe diseases end their own lives. He had admitted to assisting in the deaths of more than 100 people.

He was later played by Al Pacino in the biopic 'You Don't Know Jack', which earned the actor an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

His first assisted suicide was carried out in 1990, when he injected lethal drugs into an Alzheimer's patient in the back of a Volkswagen van. Over the ensuing decade, he helped 130 other seriously ill people to die.

"Many of the victims on whom Jack Kevorkian preyed were people with disabilities who had no terminal illness; one was simply old," observed Burke J Balch, director of National Right to Life's Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics.

"In at least five cases, autopsies were unable to confirm any disease at all," he said.

Kevorkian's 'suicide machine' drew worldwide attention when the CBS programme 60 Minutes aired footage, shot by Kevorkian himself, as he administered lethal drugs to Thomas Youk, a man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.

The tape quickly became evidence in a murder trial that sentenced Kevorkian to 10 to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder. He was paroled in 2007.

His often inflammatory efforts to legalise assisted suicide as a constitutional right were soundly rejected by the Supreme Court's unanimous 1997 Washington vs Glucksberg decision in which the Court held that assisted suicide was not a constitutional right.

"While some euthanasia advocates have sought to distance themselves from his bizarre positions and tactics, Kevorkian's tragic legacy illustrates the dangers to the most vulnerable when compassionate, humane responses to depression or disability are replaced with death as an acceptable final solution," Balch added.

Image: Jack Kevorkian with actor Al Pacino | Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters