Doctor Says He Helped Patient Commit Suicide : Medicine: Michigan inventor of self-injection suicide device tells of its first use by an Alzheimer’s disease victim.

The inventor of a suicide device said today he hooked an Alzheimer’s disease victim to the drug-injecting apparatus and watched her die.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian said Janet Adkins of Portland, Ore., used the device inside his van in a park about 40 miles north of Detroit on Monday afternoon. She pressed a button to trigger the machine, which injected her with a lethal dose of chemicals.

“The last thing Janet Adkins said was, ‘You just make my case known,’ ” said Kevorkian, a retired pathologist.

“We have planned birth, why not planned death?” he asked.

Oakland County Prosecutor Richard Thompson said he was aware Adkins had died in his county. He has said in the past that he believes that assisting suicide is a crime under Michigan law; others have interpreted the law differently.

“There is an ongoing investigation and I don’t want to discuss it any further,” Thompson said.

State police in Pontiac confirmed the woman’s death and said they are investigating. Kevorkian said he notified police after Adkins’ death.

Kevorkian said the 54-year-old woman, her husband and a friend flew to Michigan because supplying the means to commit suicide is a felony in Oregon.

“She is a remarkable woman,” Kevorkian said. “She was a housewife who traveled extensively. She taught English part-time. She played the piano. But the disease took away her ability to read music. She couldn’t even spell any more.”

“She told me she wanted to take her life while she was still clear in her mind and knew what she was doing,” Kevorkian said.

She contacted Kevorkian in October. Kevorkian said he persuaded her to try an experimental drug treatment in Seattle in an attempt to put the disease into remission.

“At first, I was not going to let her use the device,” Kevorkian said. “But the Seattle treatment didn’t work. She told me she had pills and she was going to do it (commit suicide) anyway.”

Neither the husband nor the family friend wanted to be near when the woman committed suicide, so they flew back to Oregon earlier Monday, he said.

The device involves hooking a person to an intravenous saline solution. The person can press a button that stops the saline solution and injects the drug thiopental, which causes unconsciousness.

Within a minute, potassium chloride is injected automatically, at a dosage high enough to stop the heart and cause death within minutes.