DETROIT (Reuters) - Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian, known as Dr. Death for helping more than 100 people end their lives, died early Friday at age 83, his lawyer said. Kevorkian died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, where he had been hospitalised for about two weeks with kidney and heart problems, said Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkians attorney and friend. Kevorkian, recently found to have liver cancer, died from a pulmonary embolism, said Neal Nicol, a long time friend who aided him in nearly all of his 130 admitted assisted suicides. A pathologist, Kevorkian was focussed on death and dying long before he ignited a polarising national debate over assisted suicide by crisscrossing Michigan in a rusty Volkswagen van hauling a machine to help sick and suffering people end their lives. Some viewed him as a hero who allowed the terminally ill to die with dignity, while his harshest critics reviled him as a cold-blooded killer who preyed on those suffering from chronic pain and depression. Most of his clients were middle-aged women. Dr. Jack Kevorkian was a rare human being, his long time attorney Geoffrey Fieger told reporters Friday. Its a rare human being who can single-handedly take on an entire society by the scruff of its neck and force it to focus on the suffering of other human beings. Kevorkian launched his assisted-suicide campaign in 1990, allowing an Alzheimers patient to kill herself using a machine he devised that enabled her to trigger a lethal drug injection. He was charged with first-degree murder in the case, but the charges were later dismissed.