Euthanasia

Even after he got sick, even after he'd been fighting the cancer for years longer than doctors expected, Mark Kobayashi didn't think about dying. He always tried to control his body with his mind. Shortly after having a third of his colon cut out, he was sitting up in bed like a king. I have to put all my energy down into my stomach so I'm healing, he declared. He didn't want to have bad thoughts. He didn't even want his wife, Joan, to have bad thoughts.

The Westminster dog show, at Madison Square Garden in New York, hasn't only been about the dogs lately. Last year, PETA protesters invaded the two-day event. As a handler in one of the fantastically dowdy suits that are a Westminster hallmark trotted a graceful Doberman around the ring, one of the protesters held up a sign reading "Mutts rule. " She was led away by blue-suited security officers, but another protester appeared, smartly dressed in jacket and slacks, and mounted the winners podium to hold up a sign that read "Breeders Kill Shelter Dogs Chances.

After an intense public outcry, Las Vegas officials are shying away from plans to kill desert tortoises not adopted or relocated within five days after being found on properties slated for development. Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said Friday he will introduce a resolution at the next Board of Commissioners meeting to scrap the option of euthanizing tortoises. The board is likely to approve the proposal at its Sept. 17 meeting, commissioners said.

Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the news that Belgium allowed the euthanasia of twin brothers who were deaf and going blind is how many commenters appear to favor this event and wish for similar laws in the United States. USA Today and various other sources report that the 45-year-old brothers had been close companions all their lives and lived in the same house. According to a family member, they were distraught at the idea that blindness would rob them of their independence, did not want to live in any kind of assisted-living facility and were horrified by the thought that they would never see each other again -- which would also make communication difficult, at least at first.

On Feb. 6, a baby boy was born, six weeks premature, at Sibley Hospital in Washington. His mother had been hospitalized during her pregnancy twice before--once for dehydration and again for very early labor--and the delivering obstetrician was on the lookout for more trouble. He got it. The baby didn't breathe properly and after a brief examination, he ordered him immediately transferred by ambulance to Georgetown Hospital's high-tech Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. He needed the best of care.

More than 2,000 French doctors and nurses have signed a petition declaring that they had helped patients suffering from incurable diseases to die and calling for legalized euthanasia. The declaration, published in the weekly Nouvel Observateur, comes days before the trial of a doctor and a nurse charged with administering a fatal dose of potassium to a woman suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer in August 2003.

Legalizing euthanasia would mark a "radical departure from longstanding legal and medical traditions of our country" and would "violate American convictions about human rights and equality," according to the Administrative Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Mary Alice Altorfer is misdirecting her concerns about nursing home patients like Mary, about whom she expressed her concerns about euthanasia ("It's What's Best for Her, Isn't It?" Commentary, Dec. 28). Her worry about the potential ease by which the Marys of the world might be put away as part of the euthanasia process is valid, but is the wrong concern at this time even with Oregon's recent law potentially allowing highly regulated physician-assisted suicide, not euthanasia, to competent patients.

Terminally ill Australians have begun traveling thousands of miles to an outback territory to end their lives under what is believed to be the world's first law that permits assisted suicide, a euthanasia group said Thursday. Up to 10 people are waiting for the controversial law to take effect July 1, a spokesman for the Northern Territory's Voluntary Euthanasia Network said. Most of those seeking euthanasia are elderly people with cancer, he added.

The World Medical Assn. declared euthanasia unethical in a motion approved during the last week's four-day meeting in Madrid. The association defined euthanasia as the act of deliberately ending the lives of patients, either at their own request or that of their close relatives. The motion stated: "This does not prevent the physician from respecting the will of a patient to allow the natural process of death to follow its course in the terminal phase of sickness."

I hate to be a party pooper. So I've been eager to join the celebration over "No-Kill December" -- the first time that Los Angeles city animal shelters have managed to go an entire month without euthanizing any adoptable dogs or cats. But I couldn't help worrying that "No-Kill December" would lead to January slaughter. What happened to all those dogs and cats -- 1,000 in a typical December -- the city shelters are forced to put to death every year? There's no way shelter employees could have found homes for all of them.

After more than 50 years as a veterinarian in Burbank, there's nothing small about Martin Small's contribution to Burbank's animal shelter. "I have never done anything more satisfying than what I've done since I've been here," he said. After spending the last several years working full time to establish the shelter's medical program, Small, 82, is now an on-call surgeon. Before he set foot in the shelter in 2004, cats suffered from contagious respiratory diseases and dogs were prone to kennel cough and parvovirus.

A veterinary technician at a Los Angeles city animal shelter was fired last week after officials found that he had subjected dogs to inhumane treatment while euthanizing them. Manuel Boado, 64, was discharged by the city's Civil Service Commission, which concluded that he failed to sedate the dogs he was trying to euthanize, brought dogs into a room with other dead animals and inserted euthanizing needles into jugular veins — a practice officials say was not permitted. With allegations reminiscent of a Stephen King novel, case records open a rare window into the most unpleasant task carried out by the Animal Services Department — killing animals that have no owner when its shelters run out of room.

Last time I wrote about my dad, he'd taken a fall in his bedroom, couldn't get up, but didn't want yet another ride in an ambulance. So my mother got down on the floor with him, pulled up a blanket and they went to sleep. This time they went down together, falling in the street outside a Burger King in the Bay Area town of Pittsburg. He was using a walker with my mom assisting, but he lost his balance and dragged my mother down with him. She was OK, but my dad was hurting. An ambulance happened to be going by, scooped him up and the verdict in the emergency room was a broken hip. For a senior, those two dreaded words — "broken hip" — are often the beginning of the end. Doctors said that without surgery, my father would probably die within three months.

India's Supreme Court on Monday laid out guidelines for the use of euthanasia in extreme situations involving terminally ill patients, even as it rejected a plea for its use in the case of a woman who has been in a vegetative state for nearly four decades. With the decision, India joins a handful of nations ? including Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland ? and the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington in allowing some form of euthanasia. India has no law on the issue, making the guidelines legally binding until Parliament passes legislation.

And at the end, all that's left is ash. This week, MTV's "The Hills" will come to a halt, four years and six seasons after it began, badly limping and in need of euthanasia. It's been a mighty fall for a show that, along with its predecessor, " Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," helped cement the idea of reality TV as soap opera and also stretched the formal boundaries of the genre. This season, though, has been taxing. Every remaining character is minor — someone's friend, someone's girlfriend, and so on. Audrina, once the outcast among the Laguna transplants, is now central, and sidekicks such as Stephanie and Lo have become the meat of this show.

State health officials accused a Corvallis, Ore., doctor of ordering a lethal injection for a patient against her wishes. The state Board of Medical Examiners filed a complaint accusing Dr. James D. Gallant of engaging in "active euthanasia" and voted 10 to 0 to pursue disciplinary action, the Oregonian newspaper reported. The state board alleged that Clarietta Day, 78, who had a brain hemorrhage, was given a lethal injection of a muscle-relaxing drug without her knowledge or consent.

As one of several dozen Mission Viejo Animal Shelter volunteers, I must respond to the errors in the letter (Aug. 7) from Pepe Michel. The city employees who staff our pro-life shelter are professionals who are dedicated to providing humane care for the animals we shelter. The dozens of trained volunteers who clean cages, feed, bathe, groom and exercise our guests care deeply about animal welfare. We have cared for many unlovely but still lovable animals for many months until the right person came along to adopt them.

Re "Animal rights, writ too large," Opinion, July 16 Regarding Meghan Daum's column, millions of animals are euthanized in the U.S. every year. When animal breeders manage to find a home for each of those millions of creatures, I will listen to their arguments about the right to breed. We are ultimately judged by how we treat the least fortunate among us. Right now the record is looking dismal. Cheryl Kohr Redondo Beach :: I was very glad to see a bit of sanity in Daum's column.

Four members of an alleged assisted suicide ring were charged Wednesday with helping a 58-year-old Georgia man end his life, and investigators in eight other states were looking into whether the group was involved in more deaths. The FBI is also probing the Final Exit Network, an organization whose Web site said it is "dedicated to serving people who are suffering from an intolerable condition." On Wednesday, investigators raided homes of the group's volunteers in seven of the states, a group office in Georgia and a company in Montana that authorities said supplied items used in suicides.