There Goes Dr. Death

ALTHOUGH HIS STATE MEDICAL LICENSE WAS SUSpended last year, Dr. Jack Kevorkian % of Michigan continues to make his own bizarre kind of house calls, providing the advice and equipment that have helped six of his patients take their own lives in the past two years. The last to die was a 46-year-old Pennsylvania woman suffering from cancer. Catherine Andreyev used a mask to inhale a fatal dose of carbon monoxide last Monday in Waterford, Michigan.

This time, however, Kevorkian (ghoulishly nicknamed Jack the Reaper) faced no immediate legal action, since the prosecutor in Oakland County, where all the deaths have taken place, declined to press homicide charges. Prosecutor Richard Thompson cited the fact that his past efforts have all been overturned by state courts. In the meantime, Kevorkian is free to pursue his suicide- assistance practice, unless the state legislature takes action. That seemed more likely last week, when Michigan lawmakers reacted to the latest death by finally moving toward passage of a bill that could criminalize all assisted suicides by next spring.

By contrast, Michigan law has banned the death penalty for 146 years.