Parkinson

Booth Gardner, a two-term Democratic governor who later in life spearheaded a campaign that made Washington the second state in the nation to legalize assisted suicide for the terminally ill, has died after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 76. Gardner died Friday at his Tacoma home, said family spokesman Ron Dotzauer. The millionaire heir to the Weyerhaeuser timber fortune served as the state's 19th governor from 1985 to 1993 following terms as Pierce County executive, state senator and business school dean.

Re "Hot on Parkinson's Trail," Nov. 27 The Parkinson's disease-afflicted farmer had "long suspected that [weedkillers and other toxic compounds] were somehow responsible for his disease" because he is endowed, like all of us, with sufficient common sense to know that exposure to toxic chemicals will sooner or later have detrimental health effects. The popularity of the more expensive organic produce further attests to the tacit assumption among the public that there are significant health risks associated with conventional chemical-laced produce.

Long Beach police are seeking the public's help in finding a 75-year-old man with Parkinson's disease who has been missing since Friday. Kenneth Charles Heilman left his home on Tevis Avenue for a 4 p.m. doctor's visit near Clark Avenue and Atherton Street. On Monday, police found his Saturn along the route to his doctor's office. Heilman is white, 5 feet 10, with a patch of gray hair and a mustache. He also has diabetes and needs medicine.

An ailing 78-year-old Canadian man committed suicide with Dr. Jack Kevorkian's help after consulting with him several times, Kevorkian's attorney said in Bloomfield Township, Mich. Natverlal H. Thakore of British Columbia suffered from Parkinson's disease, said Geoffrey Fieger, Kevorkian's attorney. He killed himself Saturday night. In a letter Fieger sent to the media, Thakore said he wanted to die in a dignified way. It would be the fourth suicide linked to Kevorkian since Aug. 29.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and dissident Andrei Sakharov is alive but suffering from heart ailments and Parkinson's disease, West Germany's Bild newspaper said today. In a report released in advance of its Friday editions, the newspaper said it had obtained two videotapes made at a hospital in Gorky where Sakharov is being treated.

Nearly 20 years removed from the White House, former President George H.W. Bush, accompanied by his wife, Barbara, sat down for an interview with Parade Magazine . Praising two out of his three presidential successors, Bush saved his critiques for anti-tax ringleader Grover Norquist. Bush, whose campaign for reelection in 1992 was severely damaged by his failure to live up to his pledge “no new taxes,” was asked how he felt about that same pledge becoming the calling card for the current class of Republicans.

Richard H. Strobel, 87, a veteran Associated Press photographer who recorded international news events from the Hindenburg disaster to the Los Angeles murder of Robert F. Kennedy. A photo editor with the wire service for 44 years, Strobel also served as president of the Catholic Press Council. After he retired from AP in 1975, Strobel became a photographer and columnist for the Larchmont Chronicle.

Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill died from a rare form of brain deterioration called cerebellar cortical atrophy, not Parkinson's disease as was previously thought, researchers who studied the author's autopsy report in today's New England Journal of Medicine. The results also show that alcohol abuse played no role in his death. During the last 12 years of his life, O'Neill gradually lost the ability to control his hands.

Federal and state health authorities on Monday launched a program to test "designer" street drugs from anonymous donors to detect a potent chemical that leaves some users with irreversible Parkinson's disease. An estimated 300 Californians have been exposed to MPTP, a legal "designer drug" whose structure is nearly identical to Demerol, said Chauncey L. Veatch III, director of the state Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.

Sir Michael Redgrave, the British film and stage actor and patriarch of the Redgrave acting dynasty, died today. He was 77 and had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for 12 years. Redgrave died at a nursing home in the county of Buckinghamshire west of London. His agent said his son, Corin, was at his bedside when he died.