Jack Kevorkian

He suffered from hepatitis C and kidney problems for a long time and was diagnosed with liver cancer during his later years. He died on 3 June 2011 at the age of 83.

The 2010 television film, ‘You Don’t Know Jack’, directed by Barry Levinson was based on his life and works. Al Pacino portrayed Jack Kevorkian in the film.

Kevorkian was born as the middle child of Armenian immigrants, Levon and Santenig Kevorkian. His father worked at an automobile foundry. He had two sisters.

His parents were very religious Christians who made the children regularly attend Sunday school. As a child, he questioned their beliefs and stopped attending church altogether at the age of 12.

He enjoyed artistic activities in school and was a skeptic who actively debated with teachers regarding almost everything. He taught himself German and Japanese.

He graduated with honours from Pontiac Central High School in 1945. His initial interest was in becoming an engineer, and he enrolled at the University of Michigan College Of Engineering. However, within a few months his interests shifted to biology.

He was accepted into medical college and graduated in medicine from the University of Michigan in 1952, specializing in anatomical and clinical pathology.

The beginning of his professional career coincided with the beginning of the Korean War in 1953 and he served as a medical officer in the U.S army for 15 months, spending parts of his service in Korea and Colorado.

He became fascinated with the concepts of death and dying while serving his residency in the University of Michigan. He used to photograph the eyes of dying patients in order to capture the exact moment of death.

In 1958-59, he wrote a paper advocating what he called "terminal human experimentation", proposing that prisoners on death row could be used for medical experimentation while still alive. He also suggested that organs could be harvested from the freshly dead inmates after execution and transplanted into sick patients.

He had to leave the University of Michigan as he could not find any support for his ideas. He continued his internship at Pontiac General Hospital where he transfused blood from recently dead corpses into live patients successfully.

He spent many years working at different hospitals as a pathologist during 1960s and 70s before opening his own clinic in Detroit. He began to focus more on what would become his area of expertise: euthanasia.

As an advocate of euthanasia to put terminally ill people out of their physical pain and agony, Kevorkian had shed light on the controversial issue of the ‘right to die’ of those patients who have no hope of recovery and whose pain and suffering cannot be alleviated by medicines or therapy.

He designed the euthanasia kits, "Thanatron" and "Mercitron" which enabled people requesting voluntary euthanasia to die a painless and peaceful death.