[3] In 1998, Kevorkian was arrested and tried for his role in the voluntary euthanasia of a man named Thomas Youk who had Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS.

He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition he would not offer advice about, participate in, or be present at the act of any type of euthanasia to any other person, nor that he promote or talk about the procedure of assisted suicide.

Satenig fled the Armenian genocide of 1915, finding refuge with relatives in Paris and eventually reuniting with her brother in Pontiac.

[13][14][15] Kevorkian completed residency training in anatomical and clinical pathology and briefly conducted research on blood transfusion.

He returned to the idea of using death-row inmates for medical purposes after the Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia reinstituted the death penalty.

He advocated harvesting the organs from inmates after the death penalty was carried out for transplant into sick patients, but he failed to gain the cooperation of prison officials.

[18] As a pathologist at Pontiac General Hospital, Kevorkian experimented with transfusing blood from the recently deceased into live patients.

[18] In the 1980s, Kevorkian wrote a series of articles for the German journal Medicine and Law that laid out his thinking on the ethics of euthanasia.

[20] In 1991, however, the State of Michigan revoked Kevorkian's medical license and made it clear that, given his actions, he was no longer permitted to practice medicine or to work with patients.

[23] Other people were assisted by a device which employed a gas mask fed by a canister of carbon monoxide, which Kevorkian called the "Mercitron" ("Mercy machine").

In 1992, Kevorkian himself wrote that it is always necessary to consult a psychiatrist when performing assisted suicides because a person's "mental state is [...] of paramount importance.

"[26] The report also stated that Kevorkian failed to refer at least 17 patients to a pain specialist after they complained of chronic pain and sometimes failed to obtain a complete medical record for his patients, with at least three autopsies of suicides Kevorkian had assisted with showing the person who committed suicide to have no physical sign of disease.

"[26] In a 2010 interview with Sanjay Gupta, Kevorkian stated an objection to the status of assisted suicide in Oregon, Washington, and Montana.

[29] In 2011, disability rights and anti-legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia group Not Dead Yet spoke out against Kevorkian, citing potentially concerning sentiments he expressed in his published writing.

[30] On page 214 of Prescription: Medicide, the Goodness of Planned Death, Kevorkian wrote that assisting "suffering or doomed persons [to] kill themselves" was "merely the first step, an early distasteful professional obligation... What I find most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first unpleasant step can help establish – in a [portmanteau] word obitiatry."

In a journal article titled "The Last Fearsome Taboo: Medical Aspects of Planned Death", Kevorkian also detailed anesthetizing, experimenting on, and utilizing the organs of a disabled newborn as a token of "daring and highly imaginative research" that would be possible "beyond the constraints of traditional but outmoded, hopelessly inadequate, and essentially irrelevant ethical codes now sustained for the most part by vacuous sentimental reverence".

His work tended toward the grotesque and surreal, and he had created pieces of symbolic art, such as one "of a child eating the flesh off a decomposing corpse".

[35] Sludge metal band Acid Bath used his painting "For He is Raised" as the cover art for their 1996 album Paegan Terrorism Tactics.

[39] In the November 22, 1998, broadcast of CBS News' 60 Minutes, Kevorkian allowed the airing of a videotape he made on September 17, 1998, which depicted the voluntary euthanasia of Thomas Youk, 52, who was in the final stages of Lou Gehrig's disease.

On November 25, 1998, Kevorkian was charged with first-degree murder and the delivery of a controlled substance (administering the lethal injection to Thomas Youk).

[1] Judge Jessica Cooper sentenced Kevorkian to serve 10–25 years in prison and told him: This is a court of law and you said you invited yourself here to take a final stand.

The law prohibiting euthanasia was specifically reviewed and clarified by the Michigan Supreme Court several years ago in a decision involving your very own cases, sir.

[43] In an MSNBC interview aired on September 29, 2005, Kevorkian said that if he were granted parole, he would not resume directly helping people die and would restrict himself to campaigning to have the law changed.

He appeared on the Fox News Channel's Your World with Neil Cavuto on September 2, 2009, to discuss health care reform.

[58] On March 12, 2008, Kevorkian announced plans to run for United States Congress to represent Michigan's 9th congressional district as an independent against eight-term congressman Joe Knollenberg (R-Bloomfield Hills), former Michigan Lottery commissioner and state senator Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Township), Adam Goodman (L-Royal Oak) and Douglas Campbell (G-Ferndale).

The race had already garnered national attention due to Democrats targeting the historically Republican district based in Oakland County, which Knollenberg barely won in 2006 against a little-known opponent.

[1] Kevorkian's condition grew rapidly worse and he died from a thrombosis on June 3, 2011, eight days after his 83rd birthday, at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.

[64] The Catholic Church in Detroit said Kevorkian left behind a "deadly legacy" that denied scores of people their right to "dignified, natural" deaths.

[70] Philip Nitschke, founder and director of right-to-die organization Exit International, said that Kevorkian "moved the debate forward in ways the rest of us can only imagine.

In 2015, the 1968 Volkswagen Type 2 van in which Jack Kevorkian assisted some of his suicidal patients was bought by paranormal investigator Zak Bagans (from the documentary series Ghost Adventures) for display in his haunted museum in Las Vegas.