Jack Kevorkian’s suicide machine was withdrawn from an auction last week after failing to reach the reserve price. Seventeen of his paintings embroiled in a legal dispute with a Boston museum also found no takers. The paintings, including one made with a pint of his own blood, and about 100 other personal items went on sale at the New York Institute of Technology. The estate had estimated the value of the paintings at $US2.5 million to $3.5 million. 

The suicide machine had been valued at $100,000 to $200,000 but the highest bid was $65,000. The machine, named the Thanatron, intravenously delivers drugs that put patients to sleep and stop the heart. Kevorkian stirred the right-to-die pot when he built a suicide machine that helped end the lives of 130 terminally ill people. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 for assisting the suicide of a Michigan man with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1998. ~ Washington Post, Oct 29