TV REVIEW : ‘Kevorkian Files’ Probes Death Ethics : PBS’ examination of the controversial pathologist and his patients shows them all to be driven by strong belief.

Between the lines of “Frontline’s” report, “The Kevorkian Files,” is the notion that Dr. Jack Kevorkian represents an attitude toward death unacceptable in a predominantly death-denying culture. Producer Michael Kirk’s account of the doctor notorious for his “death machine,” his suicide-driven clientele and his incessant faceoffs with the courts suggests that there’s something much deeper here than headline-grabbing.

As a trained pathologist, Kevorkian could have quietly plied his craft. For decades, however, he appears to have linked his training with the knack of an experimental scientist. He studied eye movements in hospital patients at the moment of death. He published articles calling for organ donations and transplants from death-row inmates and blood transfusions from dead to wounded soldiers in the field. He even painted death imagery.

Kevorkian was persona non grata in the U.S. medical Establishment long before the death machine, and in the numerous video recordings shown here of his consultations with patients before their suicides, it’s easy to sense Kevorkian getting his ammunition together for another battle. Perhaps the Kevorkian presented in “Files” is pathological about pathology, but he also seems driven by the faith of his patients that they are both doing the right thing.

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The heart of the story are accounts of key patient histories, from Alzheimer’s victim Janet Adkins’ case (which triggered the first murder indictment against the doctor) to the more mysterious case of Marjorie Wantz, whose maladies couldn’t be detected by the medical examiner who did her autopsy. Friends and family members uniformly express a mixture of sadness and relief as they recall their loved ones’ suicides.

They do not seem concerned by the ethical problems of the Wantz case and others, just as some of the doctors interviewed do not seem concerned by the patients’ demands for some kind of release from their pain. Kevorkian may or may not be performing some form of quackery; at the same time, these patients’ medical desires can’t be callously dismissed as merely seeking quick fixes.

We never hear from Kevorkian’s most virulent critics, those allied with the anti-abortion movement. Instead, a doctor who has also assisted a patient with dying speaks for those in the conflicted middle on the issue. Dr. Timothy Quill is often unsure of Kevorkian’s means and ends, but he dramatically concludes that this “File” of patients is actually a condemnation of doctors unwilling to help those in their direst hour.

Why did these people have to resort to Kevorkian? Where, Quill asks, were these people’s doctors?

* “The Kevorkian Files” airs on “Frontline” tonight at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, and at 8:30 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24.