Jack Kevorkian

(1928 - 2011)

An American physician, Jack Kevorkian gained international attention for his administering of more than a hundred physician-assisted suicides. His actions were highly controversial and largely opposed by the American medical establishment, but Kevorkian maintained that most American doctors failed their patients by not responding to their suffering. In 1999, he was convicted of several charges for his assistance in a patient’s suicide and was sentenced to ten to twenty-five years in prison. He was released in 2007, after having served more than eight years of his sentence, and died in 2011.