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In 1952 Jack Kevorkian graduated from the University of Michigan medical school with a specialty in pathology.

In 1956 he published an article titled “The Fundus Oculi and the Determination of Death”. The article discussed his attempts to photograph the eyes of patients who were dying, and it was this article that earned him the nickname “Doctor Death”.

In 1958 Kevorkian presented a paper at a convention in Washington, D.C. that advocated medical experiments on consenting convicts during executions. Before this paper was presented, Kevorkian was completing his residency at the University of Michigan. After the convetion they were embarassed, and Kevorkian was asked to leave their program.

From 1960 to the early 1970's Kevorkain continued his career, and eventually became Chief Pathologist of Saratoga General Hospital in Detroit.

In the late 1970's Kevorkian quit his pathology career, moved to California, and invested his life savings in directing and producing a movie based on Handel's "Messiah". Kevorkian couldn't find a distributor for the film, and it flopped.

Through the 1980s he continued his career as a pathologist and published numerous articles in medical and scientific journals detailing his ideas on euthanasia and ethics, as well as his experiments transfering blood from cadavers to live patients.

In 1987 Kevorkian took out an advertisement in a Detroit newspaper refering to himself as a “physician consultant” for “death counseling”. After publishing several articles in the German journal Medicine and Law that outlined his plans for suicide clinics, Kevorkian builds his “suicide machine”. The “suicide machine”, called the Thanatron, was created using $30 worth of scrap parts found at garage sales and hardware stores.

On June 4, 1990 Kevorkian uses his Thanatron on a 54 year-old woman from Portland, Oregon, who is terminally ill with Alzheimer’s disease. She died in the back of Kevorkian’s 1968 Volkswagen van.

On June 8, 1990 a County Circuit Court judge prohibits Kevorkian from participating in any more assisted suicides, but on December 12, a District Court Judge named Gerald McNally dismissed the murder charges against him in the death of Janet Adkins. Within the next year Kevorkian assisted two more people, Marjorie Wantz and Sherry Miller, in commiting suicide.

In November of 1991 the Michigan state Board of Medicine revokes Kevorkian’s license to pratice medicine.

Between 1992 and 1993, Kevorkian attends to the deaths of thirteen more people, most of whom died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Kevorkian was brought up on charges for the deaths of three of those people, but all charges against him were dismissed.

On December 3, 1992, the state of Michigan legislature passed a ban on assisted-suicide to take effect on March 30, 1993 but when Kevorkian helped a man commit suicide on February 15, the Governor was prompted to sign the bill into action on February 25. This new legislation made aiding in a suicide a four-year felony.

On November 29, 1993 Kevorkian begins a fast in the Oakland County jail protesting the $50,000 bond that was set after he was charged with the death of Merian Federick. He finally ends his fast on December 17 when a judge reduces his bond to $100 in exchange for Kevorkian’s promise that he would not assist another person with suicide until the legality had been determined.

On January 27, 1994 the court dismissed charges against Kevorkian in two deaths.

On May 10, 1994 the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the state’s ban on assisted-suicide was enacted unlawfully, but on December 13 the state Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the orginial ban on assisted suicide. This ruling reinstates four previous cases against Kevorkian. In October of 1995 a group of physicians and medical experts in Michigan announced their support of Kevorkian’s practices. They decided to draw up a set of guidelines for the “merciful, dignified, medically assisted termination of life”.

On February 1, 1996 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study on physicians attitudes towards physician assisted suicide.

On March 6, 1996 a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that a terminally ill but mentally competent adult has the right to end their own life with the aid of a physician. This was the first time that a federal court endorsed the constitutionality of physician assisted-suicide. Later in 1996, a bill was introduced into the House of Representatives that would prohibit tax-payer funding for assisted-suicide.

After a jury aquited Kevorkian in the deaths of Miller and Wantz on May 14, 1996, his attorney announced a previously unreported suicide that Kevorkian took part in. As of November 4, 1996 the total number of suicides he assisted in since 1990 was 46.

On June 26, 1997 the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that individual states have the right to ban physician assisted-suicide.

On November 5 residents of the state of Oregon voted to uphold their assisted-suicide law which allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients knowing that they would use the medication to end their life.

On September 1, 1998 Michigan passes a law into effect that basn physician assisted-suicide.

On November 22, 1998 CBS’s “60 Minutes” airs a videotape of Kevorkian giving a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, a 52 year-old man who was terminally ill with Lou Gehrigs disease. This broadcast began a nation-wide debate on medicine, law and ethics. Three days later, Kevorkian was charged with first degree murder in the state of Michigan in the death of Thomas Youk

On April 13, 1999 Kevorkian is convicted of second degree murder and is sentenced to 10-25 years in prison in the death of Thomas Youk. He will be eligible for paroll in April of 2005.