In this belief, he is not doing anything wrong and says that suffering patients have the right to end their misery.Dr. Kevorkian has developed what he calls a "suicide machine." This machine ends the lives of terminally ill patients. Many people try to kill themselves with overdoses of pills, but it usually doesn't work. One reason is that the people are too sick to swallow, much less move. Kevorkian says, "such people who want to die need help". Dying should be a human right. "The right to die in a manner of one's own choosing is the ultimate civil liberty". However, it is believed that physician-assisted suicide will harm many more people than it will help. In his first public speech in more than a year on the Laryy King Live Show, says the medical, religious, journalistic and legal communities won't stop him. ``Pass any law you want, I don't care,'' he says. Kevorkian, who has helped 33 people die since 1990, also denies claims that the last patient he aided wasn't really sick. On 13 April l999 retired pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian was sentenced in Michigan, USA, to two terms of imprisonment for helping a man suffering from A L S to die. For the 2nd degree murder of Thomas Youk he received a sentence of 10-25 years and for using a 'controlled substance' (lethal drug) he was given 3-7 years jail, the sentences to run concurrently. A month earlier a jury had convicted him on both counts. The case achieved enormous notoriety, not only for Dr.Kevorkian's publicly acknowledging that he had already helped at least 130 other people to die by assisted suicide, but Mr.Youk's death in September l998 was by direct injection (voluntary euthanasia). When the law enforcement authorities in Michigan did not move to charge Kevorkian with killing Mr.Youk, he took a tape of the incident to CBS Television, which aired it in the widely watched news program '60 Minutes'. On the program Kevorkian challenged prosecutors to act: three days later Kevorkian was charged with the offences.
