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The 'exit hood' preferred by Lawrence Egbert's Final Exit Network

A Maryland state medical board has pulled the license of America's new “Dr. Death” after a two-year investigation of his role assisting patient suicides. Dr. Lawrence Egbert, 87, was nicknamed “The New Doctor Death” in 2011 after the passing of Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

The medical board found that he acted in an unethical and illegal fashion in helping six patients die, and allegedly covered up evidence of the suicides. None of the patients were terminally ill.

Egbert says that he plans to appeal the decision.

Egbert has long been controversial even in the “right to die” community. As the medical director of the Final Exit Network (FEN), a pro-death group, he approved hundreds of assisted suicides, and was personally present for more than 100.

In 2012, Egbert defended his career to The Washington Post, saying that he and FEN work to help people, specifically with the organization’s preferred method of assisted suicide, known as an “exit hood.” Consisting of a hood with tubes that connect to two helium tanks, it puts helium into the hood, killing victims within minutes.

For assisted suicide advocates like Egbert, a benefit of the hood is that the dead person looks as though they died of natural causes. Because the hood and its mechanisms were removed, the board concluded that Egbert was hiding evidence of suicide.

Egbert's advocacy has caused problems for his non-medical work, as well. After his 2009 arrest, he nearly lost his position as a campus minister for the Unitarian Universalist church, according to the Post.

Egbert has long been a left-wing activist, protesting war and nuclear weapons, and throwing blood-splattered dollar bills during a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing in 2012.

His personal life has not been absent of controversy, as well. The Post reports that Egbert married his third wife, Ellen Barfield, in 2010, in order to help her get Social Security benefits when he dies. Egbert and Barfield moved in together in 1991, after Egbert's wife asked him to leave the adulterous relationship.

“We had a rational discussion about it,” Egbert described to the Post. “I was having such a good time [with Barfield] I wasn’t going to quit.”