inducing drug intravenously and then released a
dose of potassium chloride that caused a fatal heart
attack. Kevorkian sought publicity for his cause and
the suicide, which had taken place in his 1968 Volks-
wagen van, and proudly publicly displayed his ma-
chine (once onThe Phil Donahue Show).
This first assisted suicide, which took place in
Michigan, where Kevorkian lived most of his life, be-
gan a nine-year odyssey that included many assisted
suicides (more than 130 by Kevorkian’s account)
and numerous legal entanglements for Kevorkian.
He was charged with murder in Adkins’s death, but a
judge dismissed the charge. During court appear-
ances, the man now called “Dr. Death” in the media
defiantly sought publicity for his cause. Until his
March, 1999, trial, the charges were always dis-
missed, or he was acquitted by a jury.
Kevorkian’s medical license was revoked on No-
vember 20, 1991, so he could no longer legally ob-
tain or possess the drugs for the Thanatron. He then
invented a new machine he called the Mercitron
(“mercy machine”), which used a container of car-
bon monoxide attached to a gas mask to assist pa-
tients’ suicides. On November 23, 1998, the televi-
sion program60 Minutes broadcast a videotape
provided by Kevorkian showing him personally
administering a lethal injection to terminally ill
Thomas Youk and daring the authorities to ar-
rest and convict him. Kevorkian was charged with
second-degree homicide and delivery of a con-
trolled substance, convicted, and, on April 13, 1999,
sentenced to ten to twenty-five years in prison. He
was paroled on June 1, 2007, because of his failing
health, on condition that he not assist with suicides.
Impact Kevorkian’s highly publicized activism
made the right-to-die issue a high-profile public de-
bate that raised Americans’ consciousness regarding
the suffering of the terminally ill. While his crusade
to legalize physician-assisted suicide helped to initi-
ate referenda in several states that asked voters to ap-
prove legalizing active euthanasia, only Oregon ac-
tually enacted such a law. The U.S. Supreme Court
upheld states’ rights to outlaw the practice. How-
ever, studies done in the 1990’s showed growing sup-
port, by doctors and the public in general, for medi-
cally assisted termination of life.
Further Reading
Atwood-Gailey, Elizabeth.Write to Death: News Fram-
ing of the Right to Die Conflict, from Quinlan’s Coma to
Kevorkian’s Conviction. Westport, Conn.: Praeger,
2003.
Kevorkian, Jack.Prescription: Medicide—The Goodness
of Planned Death. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus
Books, 1991.
Jack CarterSee also Health care; Health care reform; Medi-
cine; Physician-assisted suicide; Supreme Court de-
cisions. Khobar Towers bombing
The Event A truck bombing of the Khobar
Towers housing complex in Khobar, Saudi
Arabia, kills nineteen Americans
Date June 25, 1996
The bombing of the Khobar housing compound was the
worst terrorist attack against United States personnel since
the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. It brought pressure on
officials in Washington to address the security and intelli-
gence vulnerabilities exposed by the incident, and it height-
ened awareness of the widening gulf between radical Islam
and the West.
The Khobar Towers, located on the Persian Gulf
near the city of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, had been oc-
cupied by coalition forces from the United States,
Saudi Arabia, France, and the United Kingdom
since the start of the 1990 Gulf War. Building 131 was
an eight-story high-rise located at the northeastern
corner of the complex and occupied by members of
the U.S. Air Force’s 4,404th Wing.
On June 25, 1996, members of the Fifty-eighth
Fighter Squadron housed in building 131 were mak-
ing preparations to turn over their duties to the
Twenty-seventh Fighter Squadron the following day.
That same evening, two men drove a Datsun into the
parking lot located just north of the complex and ad-
jacent to building 131. At 9:43p.m., they blinked
their car lights as a signal, and the driver of a sewage
truck drove into the parking lot. The truck, called a
“honey pot” by U.S. troops, had been made into a
bomb containing what was later estimated to be
more than five thousand pounds of plastic explo-
sives. After backing the truck against a chain-link
fence approximately ninety feet from building 131,
the driver and a passenger exited the truck and
climbed into the back seat of a waiting Chevrolet Ca-482 Khobar Towers bombing The Nineties in America