Ailing Blogger Asks China To Allow Human Euthanasia

By DAVID PIERSON Los Angeles Times

Published: May 20, 2007

YINCHUAN, CHINA - Confined to a rusty wheelchair and unable to control the muscles below her neck, Li Yan seemed destined for nothing more than a short life of pain and hopelessness.

Instead, the 29-year-old with muscular dystrophy has been catapulted into the center of an ethical debate. Li, fearing that her disease eventually will leave her helpless, used her blog in March to ask the National People's Congress to legalize her right to die.

"I don't want to live with my brothers and sisters-in-law after my parents' death, let alone go to an orphanage or welfare institute," wrote Li, a rosy-cheeked woman who can't keep from breaking into a smile even when discussing her most morbid wishes.

"I'd be away from heaven and life would be worse than death for me," she wrote, addressing the Congress during its annual two-week meeting in Beijing. "So I would like to apply for euthanasia when I'm still able to sit and talk."

The central government has been guarded, hinting in the state media that China isn't ready to join the few nations that have legalized euthanasia. But in a country where death shadows the underclass in myriad ways - from coal-mine explosions and sickening pollution to earthquakes and floods - many people appear to view euthanasia as an act of mercy.

There is no right-to-life movement here like the one that sought to keep brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive two years ago in Florida. In China, the one-child policy has begotten institutionalized abortion. Capital punishment is common and swift.

"China's atheism education, people's practical mind-set and poverty all add up to a willingness to accept euthanasia," said Zhang Zanning, a professor of medical law at Dongnan University in Nanjing. "I think the supporting rate for euthanasia is very high. In terms of public opinion, now is a good time for legislation."

Li, the daughter of a fertilizer factory worker in this industrial corner of northwestern China, had no idea what the rest of the country thought about euthanasia four years ago when her parents borrowed about $500 - the equivalent of three months' wages - to buy her a computer to get online. Li taught herself to type by holding a chopstick in her mouth. In early March, she copied her plea to the National People's Congress and pasted it to a message board belonging to a prominent national television reporter.

Within four days, her story had fanned out nationwide. Four weeks later, 90,000 hits had been recorded on Li's blog, with many people leaving words of encouragement and support for her right to take her own life.

"I understand and support you!" wrote a poster named Caihong. "It has nothing to do with courage, but has to do with dignity! I hope everyone can have a dignified life and death!"

Li's appeal has made her a media star. On a recent day, a crew from state-run network CCTV filmed a foreign journalist interviewing Li in her bedroom. The cramped space was decorated with a heart-shaped mirror. Along the window was a queen bed Li shared with her mother, Song Fengying.

When Li was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at 6, doctors said she wouldn't live past 18. A year later, she needed wooden boards pressed against her legs to hold them stiff so she could move. By 10, she was in a wheelchair. She was in school for just half a year before being pulled out because her parents hoped to travel to find treatment.

Li was confined to home. Her eldest brother used his old textbooks to teach her math and Chinese. At that time, she still had control of her hands and loved embroidering, she said. But by 15, her hands began to falter.

"I couldn't go out and play with the other kids," she said, her jet black bangs dangling above her eyes. "My parents had to work, and I stayed home alone. I was so lonely and bored. I felt meaningless."

It was around that time that she learned of euthanasia. She saw a TV news program about a woman in Europe who had her doctor lethally inject her.

"To die without pain. I thought, 'That doesn't sound bad,'" Li said.

No request to legalize euthanasia was ever officially submitted to the National People's Congress, which is the norm for many of the ideas thrust into the limelight during the yearly session. But Li was encouraged that it lingered in the public's consciousness. Newspapers across the country weighed in.

"Life is beautiful, but more important is the beautiful mind," read an editorial in the Shanghai Daily. "If the mind has lost hope for a dignified corporeal life, why not let it go?"