Dr Jack Kevorkian, also known as “Dr Death”, was a fascinating character. He earned his nickname long before his role in physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia hit the headlines.
Early in his career, Dr Death would attend the terminally ill to photograph their eyes. He received his famous moniker when he published a journal article called “The Fundus Oculi and the Determination of Death”.
As strange as it sounds, his fascination with the exact moment of death is not unique among medical men. After all, Dr Duncan MacDougall had sought to weigh and photograph the human soul as it leaves a body.
Dr Kevorkian, however, did not limit his experiments or interests to the moment of death. Until his own demise, Dr Kevorkian’s head had probably never seen the inside of a box. His creative thinking hatched experiments like transfusing blood from cadavers into live patients; A procedure that he believed could be applied successfully on the battlefield to save wounded soldiers. It was during these experiments that he contracted hepatitis C which later contributed to his own death. He also supported increasing the number of organs for transplant by harvesting them from inmates after they had received the death penalty.
Dr Death’s most famous inventions were his assisted-suicide machines, the Thanatron and the Mercitron. The Thanatron aimed to provide a quick and painless death in three steps by allowed terminally-ill patients to administer lethal injections. Obtaining the necessary drugs was difficult because Kevorkian’s medical license was suspended, so he devised the Mercitron which delivered death by carbon monoxide inhalation via gas mask.
Dr Jack Kevorkian was also a jazz musician, composer, and oil painter. He played the organ and flute on his limited-release CD, ‘The Kevorkian Suite: A Very Still Life’, and his paintings have been exhibited and sold in art galleries.
Dr Death claimed to have assisted in the suicides of around 130 patients over a period of nearly 20 years. His career ended when he euthanized a patient and videotaped the mercy killing. He sent the tape to the television show ’60 Minutes’ because he strongly believed he was doing the right thing. Dr Jack Kevorkian was subsequently sentenced to 10-25 years on second-degree murder charges.
Dr Death is remembered as a philosopher, researcher, musician, and artist. But it was his failure as a filmmaker that intrigues. In the late 1970s, he quit his career as a pathologist and lost his life savings directing and producing a feature movie based on Handel’s “Messiah.” The movie flopped and was never shown. Decades later, when his production of euthanasia was shown to the world, the airtime ended in jail time.
Head Over Heals 