Writing in the Detroit Free Press, reporters Joe Swickard and Pat Anstett describe the life and June 3 passing of Jack Kevorkian. Long before he made a name for himself as a “assisted suicide advocate,” Kevorkian was known to the nurses at Pontiac General Hospital in Michigan as “Dr. Death” for his bizarre experiments.

Death came naturally to the man who’d vowed he’d starve himself rather than submit to the state’s authority behind bars. “It’s not a matter of starving yourself in jail, it’s a matter of I don’t want to live as a slave and imprisonment is the ultimate slavery,” he said in 1998.

In that same year, Rev. Robert A. Sirico wrote “Terminal TV” for the New York Times in which he examined Kevorkian’s “twisted rationale, one that overlooked the reality that the ethic of life is the precondition of the freedom to choose.” Rev. Sirico also cited Kevorkian’s threat to starve himself, which turned out to be empty bluster.

The most immediate question is, What should be done with Dr. Kevorkian? Earlier this month Michigan voters overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that would have legalized assisted suicide. The law offers no protection for Dr. Kevorkian. Recognizing this, he has invited the authorities to arrest him, in which case he promises to starve himself.

Former Oakland County (Mich.) prosecutor David Gorcyca told Detroit television station WXYZ that he admired Jack Kevorkian “for mitment to his controversial crusade.” However, Gorcyca said that if “Dr. Death” realized how sick he was himself, it was “hypocritical” not to use assisted suicide to end his own life.

“I always thought some day, when he gets near the end, he’s going to videotape it and he’s going to end his own life and he’s going to air it for the world to see,” Gorcyca said.

WXYZ reported that Kevorkian died early Friday morning at a Royal Oak, Mich., hospital. “Friends say he passed away peacefully, to the sounds of his favorite classical music,” the station said.

Read Rev. Sirico’s “Terminal TV.”