Dr. Jack Kevorkian slumps in a wheelchair, a gray jailhouse blanket draped over his head and around his frail body. With his cheeks sunken and sallow, his eyes dark and deep, Kevorkian more than ever personifies a grim and haunting "Dr. Death."
He barely raises his head for the national media that have come to Michigan courtrooms to watch him win, lose or die. Weighing just 128 pounds when he was jailed Nov. 30 on an assisted-suicide charge, he has refused solid foods since then to protest a law he believes is unconstitutional.As images of the 65-year-old Kevorkian being wheeled from jailhouse to courthouse are transmitted across the country, his campaign for assisted suicide resembles at times a seedy circus sideshow, at others a valiant crusade for "death with dignity."
In Ann Arbor, 50 miles west of Detroit, street vendors are hawking T-shirts emblazoned, "Had Enough? Call Dr. Kevorkian." Gift certificates "good for one visit" to Kevorkian are journeying through the nation's fax machines.
Kevorkian has been the target of editorial cartoons, including one depicting "Kevorkian's Suicide King Drive-Thru." The Times Herald newspaper of Port Huron called him "a buffoon, not a martyr."
What remains to be seen is whether the drama is helping his cause or hurting it.
"I think he's succeeding in getting the issue on the American agenda," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Minnesota's biomedical ethics center. "But now he's in danger of trivializing it, of almost making it look silly because the issue has become so closely identified with his quirks."
If Kevorkian "doesn't start behaving better, he'll lose public sympathy," Caplan said.
On Tuesday, Kevorkian, who has been present at 20 suicides since 1990, managed to get one assisted-suicide charge against him dismissed. But he faces two other such charges and remains in jail.
At court appearances, Kevorkian is given standing ovations by followers who view him as their hero, their Martin Luther King, their Gandhi.
Friends of Kevorkian, a group that stages rallies outside the jail, prints "Free Jack" and "I Back Jack" buttons and even sewed him a quilt to replace the cellblock gray one.
Sue Levine of West Bloomfield sewed a panel reading "angel of mercy."
"I think he is a brilliant, compassionate man and I wholeheartedly support his actions, but I don't want to see him die as a martyr to this cause. That would be a tragic waste," she said. "More than anything else, I want to preserve that right (to assisted suicide). Not to say I would use it for myself, but I want that option to be there."
John Tydings of Baltimore believes so much in Kevorkian that he has vowed to commit suicide if Kevorkian dies in jail - a pledge Kevorkian wants Tydings to drop.
"I'm terrified at the prospect of dying, but even more terrified at living in a world without the right to self-determination," Tydings said when he made his pledge earlier this month.
Dawn Hasselhuhn, who formed the support group, said Kevorkian is sincere in his hunger strike and his cause.
A CBS poll released Wednesday said 58 percent of those surveyed support doctor-assisted suicide. However, only 46 percent approved of Kevorkian himself and 39 percent disapproved. The nationwide poll of 892 adults was conducted by telephone Dec. 13-14. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
A Harris poll conducted in mid-November, after Kevorkian was jailed for three days in Detroit but before his longer incarceration in Pontiac, found 58 percent supporting Kevorkian.
Seventy-three percent agreed that "the law should allow doctors to comply with the wishes of a dying patient in severe distress who asks to have his or her life ended." The telephone survey of 1,254 people nationwide had a 3-point margin of error.
Leonard Fleck, an associate professor at Michigan State University's Ethics and Humanities Center and a member of President Clinton's health reform task force, said he personally disagrees with Kevorkian's methods.
But "the fact of the matter is Kevorkian has very broad popular support," Fleck said. "This is really an issue that needs to be addressed. It can't be swept under the table."