Terminally Ill

Bob Iritano died Thursday morning. He was 51. Iritano wasn't a celebrity. He wasn't a captain of industry or a mover and shaker. Iritano was just a guy who worked his job as an insurance broker every day. He was a husband. He was the father of four kids. Iritano also had terminal cancer. He knew he was going to die. The only question was when. His insurer, Health Net, decided last year not to cover a life-extending procedure that had worked just a few months earlier.

He was known as Dr. Death, a Michigan physician who helped his patients kill themselves. In doing so, Jack Kevorkian inflamed a nationwide debate in the 1990s over a terminally ill patient's right to die. And he served eight years in prison for second-degree murder for administering the lethal injection rather than helping the patient do it himself. Kevorkian began his crusade mindful of his own mortality. "You don't know what will happen when you get older," he said in a 1998 interview with "60 Minutes.

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.

On Dec. 24, 2007, 20-year-old Cora Brittany Hill of Orlando, Fla., received the ultimate Christmas gift: a new pair of lungs. At the time, cystic fibrosis was killing her. Her lungs had been so nearly destroyed by the disease that every breath had to be forced in and out. New, healthy lungs were her only hope, and she got them, thanks to the benevolence and foresight of the family of a stranger who had just died. But transplants, though they have an impressively high rate of success, are not infallible.

Palliative care is designed to relieve suffering and improve quality of life for people with terminal illnesses. It's not supposed to help them people live longer. But according to a new study, it may do just that. Researchers studied 151 people with non-small-cell lung cancer that had spread to other parts of their bodies. Most people with this diagnosis die within one year. In the study, 77 newly diagnosed patients were assigned to receive palliative care along with the standard treatment for the cancer.

By his own admission, 39-year-old Kevin Jackson made some really bad choices in his life, and he's paying for them. Jackson is behind bars in Sacramento, 14 years into a 30-to-life sentence for a third-strike conviction out of Orange County in 1996. Here's a question, though: If you knew Jackson had a history of mental illness dating back to the age of 9, that he walks with a cane and is expected to die within months from the cancer that has spread from his stomach to his spine and lymph nodes, and that his third strike involved stealing a set of keys, would you want your tax dollars spent to keep him locked up?

Most doctors don't talk about end-of-life issues with their cancer patients when those patients are feeling well, a new survey has found. Nor do they talk about them until treatments have been exhausted. Those delays mean patients might not be able to make truly informed choices early in their treatment. The study, published online Jan. 11 in the journal Cancer, surveyed 4,188 physicians about how they would talk to a hypothetical cancer patient with four to six months to live. A majority of respondents (65%)

For the second time in as many years, a state parole board voted unanimously Wednesday to deny one of Charles Manson's fiercest followers her request for a "compassionate release" so that she can die at home. Convicted murderer Susan Atkins, 61, is terminally ill with cancer and has only months to live, doctors say. The issue of mercy has long haunted Atkins. Nearly 40 years ago, actress Sharon Tate begged the knife-wielding Atkins to spare her life and that of her unborn child.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cleared the way Thursday for the release of a terminally ill inmate serving a life prison sentence for murdering her abusive boyfriend in 1982, in a controversial case championed by advocates for battered women. Deborah Peagler, 49, is expected to be released early next week, according to one of her attorneys. She has spent more than 26 years behind bars for luring her boyfriend to a park near Lawndale, where two men beat and strangled him. The state's Board of Parole Hearings decided last month that Peagler should be freed, despite opposition from the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.