Dr Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan doctor who has acknowledged assisting more than 120 people commit suicide, crossed another threshold by moving on to euthanasia, a process in which he actively helped put a man to death to help end misery from a debilitating disease.

In a September 17 event which he had taped, Dr Kevorkian injected the fatal dose of a heart stopping drug into Thomas Youk, 52, a patient with a terminal degenerative muscular disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and more commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Youk, who could barely lift his own hand and struggled to speak and breathe, wanted to die, his family said. Dr Kevorkian, who has provocatively advocated assisted suicide and euthanasia, helped him across in a widely hyped eventthan inflamed debate on the sensitive subject.

The euthanasia tape was shown on CBS's highly-acclaimed 60 minutes Sunday evening. Both the network and the programme came under fire for what critics described as a provocative stunt.

In the tape--poorly produced by professional standards--Dr Kevorkian blocks the view as he injects Youk, first with a drug to put him to sleep and later with a lethal dose of potassium chloride to stop his heart.

There is no close up of the dying man at the moment of death but Mike Wallace, the journalist who anchored the story, asks: ``Is he dead now?'' Dr Kevorkian replies: ``He is dying now.''

In an interview that follows the taped death, Dr Kevorkian, whose crusade is now in its eighth year, argues for the right of people suffering from terminally ill diseases to die and challenges authorities to prosecute him for the Youk case.

In previous acknowledged cases of assisted suicide, Dr Kevorkian facilitated his patients death by activating homemade death devicesthat killed them with intravenous chemicals or carbon monoxide.

``We need active euthanasia. There are patients who just can't do this for themselves. From now on I'm doing them all that way. It's faster, cleaner and easier,'' Dr Kevorkian told the Oakland Press newspaper last week, explaining his decision to go the whole hog.

``The issue is got to be raised to a level where it is finally decided,'' he told 60 Minutes, justifying the decision to tape and telecast the event.

Law enforcement authorities reacted cautiously saying they would have to review the tape and showed some reluctance to prosecute Dr Kevorkian on the basis of a media event. Dr Kevorkian sent away the patient's family before injecting him to prevent them from being named accomplices in the event of charges against him.

Authorities have tried to prosecute Dr Kevorkian for assisting suicides four times in the past but have come up short each time.

Youk's wife said in the broadcast that she was grateful Dr Kevorkian hadended her husband's suffering. ``I don't consider it murder. It was humane,'' she said.

Only a few weeks before Dr Kevorkian's taped event, Michigan enacted a law making assisted suicide a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Euthanasia would typically count as homicide. In the elections earlier this month, voters in Michigan rejected a ballot referendum that would have permitted assisted suicides.

While medical ethicists condemned the event, media mavens too went ballistic over the telecast with one critic saying ``it is part of a climate in which many of the life's most intimate areas are common grist for the media.''

In recent days, monitors and ombudsmen have watched in increasing horror as the media has pushed the limits into hitherto sacred areas, particularly because of the Internet.

While the Clinton sex saga is well-chronicled in this regard, there have been other pathbreaking events too. In 1996, writer Timothy Leary went live on the Net to show his death from cancer (the momentof his death was finally off camera). Earlier this year, a baby's birth was shown live on the Net. In the pipeline are several proposals by young couples intent on showing off live their loss of virginity.

``That this death is staged for the cameras is the most unsettling aspect of the story, a dark corollary to the growing assumption that the untelevised life is not worth living,'' a television critic for the New York Times wrote.

CBS got a pasting for the telecast because it was linked to the ratings. November is traditionally the month the viewership is monitored to fix advertising rates. In the fiercely competitive world of TV advertising, networks outdo one another in crossing boundaries.

But the network defended itself from the charges, saying the programme ``performed a valuable public service.'' Local networks-which take the CBS feed-too were free to determine if it was appropriate for telecast. Some local networks in the Midwest did indeed delete the Kevorkian story.