News Judges seleci 1,130-Ib. grand champion Debbie Samaroo’s 1,130-lb. steer project was named grand champion fed calf in the steer class at the Vancouver Island Select 4-H Beef Club’s annual rally day Saturday at Cumberland Farm. Her animal had “fuller hind- qua:.2rs and 1s a little more condi- tioned’’ than Chris Wilson’s 1,100-Ib. steer, which was judged reserve grand champion, assiStant leader Rodney Frost said. Adrian Gibbon’s steer project received third place in the rally day event at the new Saanichton fairgrounds. In the junior showmanship cate- gory Drew Futcher’s animal placed first, with Spunky Timmins in second and Sarah Swift in third. Cory Hastings, 9, took last place in the junior showmanship catego- ry with the smallest animal in the competition. Although Beau, a 910-lb. Hereford, was “lacking in frame size,” 4-H leaders urged the first-year member to stay with it. Judges at the rally day were Gordy Michell, Michelle Pass- more, Mary Delamere and Ted Stevens. The annual rally day was held inside the former RCMP bam that was trucked to the Island from the Expo °86 site in Vancouver at the conclusion of the world fair. Com- plete with skylights, the interior is perfect for cattle shows, remaining cool on hot days. Euthanasia by Hubert Beyer Special to The Review Victoria — A headline in this moming’s paper caught my eye. “Anguished MD meets soldier saved in hell.” The story was about a U.S. Army surgeon who saved the life _ of a horribly wounded soldier “during the Vietnam War and spent the next 23 years filled with anguish over whether he did the right thing. In 1968, Kenneth McGarity’s helicopter exploded after taking a hit from a rocket-propelled gren- ade. Dr. Ken Swan amputated both his legs and supervised other doc- tors who tried to repair severe eye, arm and head injuries. His col- leagues criticized him for not allowing the boy to die. Recently, Swan succeeded in tracking down the boy and found a happily-married family man who hopes to help others overcome disabilities such as his, being blind and having no legs. McGarity is 43-years-old now. He lives wi-h his wife and two daughters 180 kilometres south- west of Atlanta and is immensely grateful to Swan for pulling him through 23 years ago. “Tf he hadn’t stuck all the pieces back together, I wouldn’t have this wonderful wife and thesc great children,” he said. Later in the day, I got a phone call from a reader, James Hargrave, who lives near Mission, who asked for my theughts on what the recent Royal Commission report on health care referred to as the “right to die with dignity.” Hargrave followed up his phone call with a letter he sent me by fax that same day. In his letter, Har- grave voices concern that rather than just advocating the adminis- tering of pain-killing drugs such as morphine, even at the risk of KEEPING THE HEREFORD’S head up is important during judging, Vancouver Island Select 4-H Beef Club members demonstrated during their rally day Saturday at Cumber- land Farm on Stellys Crossroad. — the next great debate shortening the patient’s life span, the report actually recommends active euthanasia, the killing of a terminally-ill patient: “In this domain, things are changing so rapidly that our socie- ty has not been able to react. We have the Nancy Cruzon case, Lion’s Gate euthanasia case, a nurse arrested for administering a fatal dose of potassium chloride,” Hargrave says. “Tnitiative 119 in Washington, the private member bills on euthanasia put forth in Ottawa, AIDS victims aiding other AIDS patients in suicide, and now, in B.C., the Royal Commission on Health care suggesting that active euthanasia be allowed,” he adds. Hargrave sees similarities between the abortion debate and the euthanasia debate. He fears that both abortion and euthanasia take life where it should be nur- tured. Regardless of where you stand on either issue, Hargrave is, of course, right when he says that they need thorough airing. For my taste, the Royal Commis- sion report was altogether too vague and esoteric with regard to euthanasia. Couching the issue in solemn phrases such as “the right to die with dignity’’ doesn’t change the impact of what the report recommended — doctor- assisted death. In that context, I keep thinking. about the recent testimony of one doctor who appeared before a federal committee dealing with the question of euthanasia. The main advocates of the right to die with dignity, she said, are healthy people whose death was a long way off. Nobody, she said, was asking the dying. She said she cared for more than 4,000 dying people during her career as a physician, and not one of them had asked her to speed up their death. _ A dying person, she said, doesn’t want death to come earlier, but relief from pain and “a com- GLENN WERKMAN photo panion along the way.” And, as Hargrave pointed out, there is a world of difference between easing a terminally-ill , patient’s pain at the nsk of shor- tening his or her life, and ending a patient’s life, even if the patient requests it. Those of us whose death is still in the realm of hypothesis, cannot possibly imagine what a dying person wants. And any contribu- tion we make to the euthanasia debate is, therefore, also a very hypothetical one. ae We'll be discussing this issue for some time to come, and I’m not sure whether there is an answer that will satisfy everyone, but I agree with Hargrave that discuss it we must. 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