The Prescriptions for ‘Medicide’

Although his first choice is lethal injection, Dr. Jack Kevorkian says carbon monoxide is a good, but not perfect, backup.

As he wrote in his book, “Prescription: Medicide”: Carbon monoxide “has no color, taste or smell. (And) in light-complexioned people it often produces a rosy color that makes the victim look better as a corpse.”

But for “a serene, humane, and rapid death,” says Kevorkian, lethal injection is still best.

Kevorkian’s recipe of drugs is nearly identical to that used for many modern executions: A fast-acting barbiturate for near-instantaneous unconsciousness, a muscle paralyzer to stop breathing, and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Using gears from small toys he collected on weekend forays into flea markets, Kevorkian crafted his suicide machine to deliver the drugs through an intravenous tube.

The solutions flow at the patient’s touch of a switch.

With mercy in mind, he says, he named his machine the Mercitron.