text: Illness and death At Thanksgiving dinner on Long Island in November 1983, several family members openly expressed worry about Kaufman's persistent coughing. He claimed that he had been coughing for nearly a month, visited his doctor, and was told that nothing was wrong. When he returned to Los Angeles, he consulted another physician and then underwent a series of tests at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. A few days later, he was diagnosed with large-cell carcinoma of the lung, typically associated with smoking.
  After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during January 1984 performances, Kaufman acknowledged that he had an unspecified illness that he hoped to cure with natural medicine, including a diet of all fruits and vegetables, among other measures. Kaufman received palliative radiotherapy, but by then the cancer had spread from his lungs to his brain. His final public appearance was at the premiere of My Breakfast With Blassie in March 1984, where he appeared thin and with a mohawk hair style (radiation treatments had caused the loss of his hair).
  The next day, Kaufman and Margulies flew to Baguio, Philippines, where, as a last resort, he received treatments of a pseudoscientific procedure called psychic surgery (now recognized as explicitly deceptive medical fraud).
  Afterward, Kaufman initially said that he felt better and returned to the U.S., but he died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984, at the age of 35. He is buried in Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York.