Category Archives: Euthanasia

Updated May 16, 2017 09:27:27

New South Wales is a step closer to allowing terminally ill people to voluntarily end their lives, with a draft bill with cross-party support being released today.

The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill has been drafted by a parliamentary working group made up of members from the Coalition, Labor, Greens and an independent.

The draft bill would give a person over the age of 25 the right to request assistance from a medical practitioner to end their life.

They must be experiencing severe pain or physical incapacity, and be likely to die within 12 months.

Patients must be assessed by their primary doctor, then a specialist, as well as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Patients would then be allowed to self-administer a lethal substance to end their lives. They may also be assisted by a medical practitioner or nominated person.

The process would include a cooling-off period of 48 hours, which starts once a request for assistance certificate has been completed.

The bill would also enable a close relative of the patient to apply to the Supreme Court for a judicial review.

Nationals MP Trevor Khan said it was a cautious bill with "a range of safeguards to meet the inevitable criticisms that a bill such as this will face when it's introduced into Parliament".

"I'm expecting that we'll be treated thoughtfully and that the issue, as a whole, will be free of the politics that can infest these debates," he said.

He said he would urge his parliamentary colleagues to think of their own family members and vote with their conscience.

Mr Khan said assisted-dying legislation had significant public support.

"The overwhelming majority of Australians and people who live in NSW want some action on this subject," he said.

Labor MP Lynda Voltz said politicians needed to listen to community support for end-of-life legislation.

"I go and walk my dog and people talk to me about it, I go out to community meetings and people talk about it," she said.

"There is a lot of community support out there for a bill of this nature and parliaments can no longer stick their head in the sand and ignore that community expectation."

Ms Voltz said it had taken about 12 months to create a draft bill "that meets the community's expectations, legal expectations and medical expectations".

The legislation will face a conscience vote when it's finalised and then introduced to State Parliament.

Topics: state-parliament, euthanasia, nsw, sydney-2000

First posted May 16, 2017 08:43:31

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Euthanasia debate: NSW Parliament to consider drafted legislation on assisted dying - ABC Online

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled, Parliament has legislated and provinces have set up new systems. For most Canadians the assisted suicide debate is last years news story. But Cardinal Gerhard Mller, head of the Catholic Churchs theological watchdog-agency, begs to differ.

We shall prevail, Mller told an audience of bioethicists, theologians, doctors and nurses at Torontos St. Michaels Cathedral May 15.

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called Canadas turn to legalized euthanasia tragic.

Euthanasia not only constitutes a grave wrong in itself, but its legalization creates toxic and deadly social pathologies that disproportionately afflict the weakest members of society, Mller declared.

The cardinal was in Toronto to deliver the keynote address at a Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute conference dedicated to the conscience rights of health care professionals. Muller urged members of the CCBI to persuade Canadian citizens to take the necessary steps to reverse the dangerous legal error of your Supreme Court and Parliament, and in the meantime, to protect the rights of conscience of health care providers who refuse to take the lives of those that they have sworn to treat and comfort.

Fr. Leo Walsh, who heads up the CCBI branch at Assumption University in Windsor, Ont., called the cardinals address dramatically important.

While its true that those who oppose physician-assisted death have lost the debate up to this point and the law is unlikely to change soon, that doesnt mean the debate is over, Walsh said.

We dont give up, he said. We have to keep pushing it. We have to invite them (politicians and assisted suicide advocates) to see this good.

In bringing Mller in to argue against legalized euthanasia, the CCBI is tapping a deep well of Catholic thinking and the highest authority on Catholic teaching. In a recent book-length interview, the cardinal argues for a brand of theology that isnt satisfied with merely internal Church arguments. Mller believes Catholics have something to say and must say it publicly, whether its popular or not.

Amid so much irrationality and frivolity, we must seek out the enemy nihilism, agnosticism and skepticism so widespread in our society because of its loss of realism and humanity and, with the help of the riches of the magisterium of the Church, fight it systematically, Mller said in The Cardinal Mller Report, a 2016 volume from the American Catholic publisher Ignatius Press. Everything is reinvented, anything goes. In society, we can only expect the wind that blows us this way and that. In society, we can only seek the comfort of being always on the side of the majority and not that of the brave witness we bear by swimming against the current when we must.

The former bishop of Regensburg, Germany, Mller began his priestly life as an academic expert on Protestant theologian and Second World War martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He is a personal friend of Pope Benedict XVI, who first appointed him to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Mller is the founder of the Pope Benedict XVI Institute in Regensburg charged with publishing the complete works of Joseph Ratzinger.

The next step for Canadians who oppose medicalized killing must be to legally protect the conscience rights of doctors who refuse to refer their patients on to medical aid in dying (MAID) assessments, Mller said.

No one who trains and takes an oath to care for the sick should be pressed into ending the lives of the very people that they have promised to serve, Mller told about 200 people who had gathered at St. Michaels Cathedral for evening prayer, followed by the cardinals address.

Doctors who regard sending their patients on to be assessed for euthanasia as tantamount to signing their death warrant arent asking for an exemption to an otherwise legitimate regime based on unique and particular beliefs or values, Mller said.

Refusal to engage in euthanasia represents basic fidelity to the very medical art that the physician professes, he said. To compel a doctor to participate in any manner in euthanasia is to force him to cease being a doctor and to betray the very profession to which he has given his life.

Any law that forces a physician to act against what he knows to be the most basic good of the patient the preservation of his very life either directly or indirectly, is unjust.

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'Tragic' euthanasia law must be fought, Cardinal Mller tells Canadian audience - The Catholic Register

NewsBusters (blog)

Lifetime's Pro-Euthanasia Drama Doctor Admits Joy of Killing NewsBusters (blog) Sunday night's episode of Lifetime's Mary Kills People, Raised by Wolves, continued to praise Mary for her lethal mission despite her and her partner's doubts. The episode also revealed that Mary helped her mother commit suicide when she was only 16.

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Lifetime's Pro-Euthanasia Drama Doctor Admits Joy of Killing - NewsBusters (blog)

A recent episode of Australian television show Q&A sparked debate about the level of Christian support for assisted dying in Australia. Author and journalist Nikki Gemmell, a panelist on the show, claimed that 80% of Australians and up to 70% of Catholics and Anglicans support euthanasia laws.

Audience members were sceptical, and requested that the claim be verified.

According to a Fact-Check published in The Conversation, Gemmells statement is backed up by a number of surveys but not all. Southern Cross University Aged Services Professor Colleen Cartwright wrote that public support can drop significantly depending on the questions asked, how the survey was conducted and who conducted it. Cartwright discussed a variety of polls, some of which suggested that up to 74% of Catholics and 81% of Anglicans supported euthanasia, while others reported that only 28% of Catholics and 25% of Anglicans supported euthanasia.

Support for voluntary euthanasia is generally higher when the question asks about patients with unrelievable suffering who have absolutely no chance of recovering, Cartwright said. Support falls when patients do not have a terminal illness.

In a review of the article, University of Newcastle legal academic Charles Douglas observed that support might be lower if a model of assisted death is specified.

[One] study reported 73% approval for unspecified assistance, 64% support for a doctor administering life-ending medication and 55% support for a doctor prescribing life-ending medication that the patient could take, Douglas said.

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Do Australian Christians support euthanasia? - BioEdge

SAN FERNANDO, Calif. May was supposed to be dead by now. The charcoal-and-white pit bull mix had languished for more than two months at a high-kill animal shelter in east Los Angeles County, and though shed passed one temperament test required for adoption, she failed a second. That essentially put her on death row at the facility.

But a small rescue group got to May first and reserved her a spot on a school bus that would take her 840 miles north to Eugene, Ore.; there, another rescue had pledged to find her a home. And so on a sunny Saturday morning, she bounded up the steps of the red bus and quickly settled into a large crate near the back.

She had plenty of company as the wheels rolled along the highway: 105 other dogs and cats collected from crowded shelters in Californiaand destined for the Pacific Northwest, where euthanasia rates are lower and pets are in greater demand. Their four rows of crates were stacked floor to ceiling. These little souls have engulfed me, admitted Phil Broussard, the garrulous trucker driving them up the coast.

His passengers were among the more than 10,000 animals that will be ferried out of the area this year by Rescue Express, one of the dozens of organizations across the nation fueling a dizzying daily reshuffle of dogs and cats by car, van, bus, and private and even chartered plane.

These transports, mostly from high-kill southern regions, are small but growing factors in a long-term decline in euthanasia at U.S. shelters. According to some estimates, animal shelters killed as many as 20 million cats and dogs annually in the 1970s. That had fallen to 2.6 million by 2011 and to 1.5 million today, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The numbers are only approximations, because no central data collection exists and only some states require shelters to report intake and outcome figures. But animal advocates agree that the decrease in euthanasia has been dramatic, driven mostly by successful spay-neuter programs and, more recently, by savvy adoption campaigns, greater efforts to reunite lost pets with owners and the proliferation of advocacy groups both small and large that have swept in to help municipal shelters, often poorly funded and sluggish.

This has been the single biggest success for the animal protection movement, said Hal Herzog, a psychology professor at Western Carolina University who has long studied human-animal relationships. Its been an incredible drop.

[Whats a no-kill animal shelter? The answer is more complicated than it seems.]

Still, hundreds of thousands of animals are euthanized each year, and advocates face challenges to pushing rates lower. For one, pit bull-type dogs often perceived as dangerous and prohibited by landlords disproportionately populate shelters. And feline sterilization continues to lag, one reason cats make up nearly 60 percent of shelter animals killed, according to the ASPCA.

Progress remains geographically lopsided, too. Advocates point to northern cities more concerted spay-neuter campaigns and mention cultural differences in attitudes about sterilizing pets. Climate is another factor: In warmer regions, cats go into heat more often, pets are more likely to be allowed outside, and strays more easily survive all of which lead to more kittens and puppies.

Whatever the reason, shelters and rescue groups say an increasing number of communities in northern parts of the country now take in migrants young and old, small and large. Nearly a third of the 30,000 dogs and cats received by a Portland, Ore., coalition of six shelters in 2016 came from outside the area, including from Hawaii.

For a family thats looking for that solid dog thats good with kids and other animals those are really tough to find, said Anika Moje, manager of the Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland, which had a 95 percent live-release rate in 2016.

This overground pet railroad existed on a small scale for years, then rapidly expanded in the eastern United States after Hurricane Katrina leftthousands of animals homeless in 2005. Transports more recently have mushroomed in the West, despite concerns in some places about what remains a fairly unregulated practice.

[Being labeled a pit bull can doom a shelter dogs chances of adoption]

Yet even those who devote their lives to these efforts concede they will not end euthanasia of healthy animals.

Were the Band-Aid, said Ric Browde, a board member of Wings of Rescue in Southern California. The group flies thousands of animals a year in its private plane and, sometimes, a chartered jet that can cost $20,000 a flight. Its sort of Einsteins definition of insanity, repeating things over and over and expecting a different result. I can take dogs out of a shelter every day, but if it fills back up, have I done anything?

The key is keeping the facilities from filling in the first place, says the ASPCA, which in 2014 pledged $25 million to help do this in the Los Angeles area. One of the public shelters it targeted was Baldwin Park, where May was housed for several weeks; it euthanizes 44 percent of the animals ittakes in. On a recent Wednesday, ASPCA staff there counseled people who came to surrender dogs or cats, pointing them toward discounted veterinary care and sterilization services expenses that often cause individuals to give up their pets.

The following Saturday, volunteer Jana Savage brought May to board the Rescue Express bus. May was a dog the volunteers at Baldwin Park were worried about, said Savage, a writer who has helped there for several years. They all felt the countys temperament test had not given her a fair shake.

Onto the bus went May, along with a miniature pinscher, a yellow puppy and several other small pooches. Broussard had driven the vehicle down the night before from the Rescue Express base in Eugene. The longtime trucker runs many of the organizations weekly transports, which begin in San Fernando and usually end near the Washington-Canada border.

[Does America have enough dogs for all the people who want one?]

The nonprofit has moved more than 8,000 animals since a former accounting software entrepreneur, a millionaire named Mike McCarthy, founded it two years ago. Hed always had a passion for animals and had donated to several related causes, and after watching a California friend transfer dogs north, he decided there was a real need for better-quality transports.

So McCarthy moved to Eugene a midpoint on the West Coast to start his own, one that would be free for the small rescue groups hed seen were often bleeding cash. He opted to retrofit school buses, which he determined were more durable than the vans favored by many transports, could hold more crates and were cheaper to run than planes. Nowadays, that cost is about $20 to $30 per animal, and Rescue Express, with a three-bus fleet, is set to add a route up Interstate 15 through Utah.

McCarthy, 57, wants to take the model nationwide, though he knows it would make only a small dent in a big problem. It makes a difference to the animals that are on the bus, he said. Thats how I look at it.

From San Fernando to the Canada border, the journey takes more than 20 hours and involves a driver swap. Broussard pulled onto the highwayat 8:35 a.m. Riding shotgun was Laura Miller, a Target manager who moonlights as a Rescue Express transport supervisor a job that entails checking all the animals in and out, plus keeping their crates clean and water bowls filled.

The animals, separated from the cab by a metal partition, were quiet save for one yippy dog named Brownie. As he drove, Broussard held forth on the local geography and national politics. Miller kept tabs on the air conditioning in the back and texted with contacts at the next stop.

At a public shelter in Bakersfield, a few dozen more animals were loaded, including a litter of 6-week-old kittens bound for a rescue group outside of Portland. Then it was back to the highway.

At 12:30 p.m., at a truck-stop parking lot in Fresno, a group of volunteers helped put about 50 dogs and cats on board. Two dogs got on in Turlock, then four more in Lathrop. By 3:15 p.m., the bus was carrying 84 dogs and 22 cats. By 7:30 p.m., the snow-capped Mount Shasta signaled that Oregon was not far off. Miller held up her cellphone and took photos of the sunset.

It was raining and chilly when the bus pulled over in Roseburg, Ore., where an adopter was waiting to greet his new puppy. After midnight, Broussard turned into a gas station lot outside Eugene. Some 15 people, standing under hoods and umbrellas, lined up in the dark to retrieve two dozen animals.

The second-to-last was May, who was whisked away to a streetlight, where she promptly relieved herself.

Today, May is hanging out at Northwest Dog Project, the rescue that had agreed to find her a home. Its 22-acre facility usually hosts 10 to 18 dogs at a time in cottages with piped-in music and even skylights. Theres a doggy swimming pool, an agility course, a play yard and hiking trails.

A majority of the dogs we take in come from high-kill shelters in California, where theyve been living in noise and chaos. This is a good place for them to decompress, director Emma Scott explained.

Like all the animals the organization accepts, 2-year-old May will spend a few weeks being evaluated and trained. Scott said she has been extremely friendly and adores people. She already knew how to sit, and now were working on her leash manners. Well do everything we can to make her as adoptable as we can.

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More people are adopting old dogs really old dogs

One tall building. One dark and stormy night. 395 dead birds.

Bambis revenge? Deer photographed nibbling on human bones, a first.

Interior Dept. launches Doggy Days, becoming first federal agency to welcome pets

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From death row to adoption: Saving animals by car, van, bus and ... - Washington Post

When Michelangelo was asked how he created his masterpiece David, he simply said I saw David through the stone and I simply chipped away everything that was not David. Since we on the proposition are on a similar pursuit as Michelangelo in creating a masterpiece, lets first look at what supporting physician-assisted suicide is not:

1) Supporting PAS is not supporting the end of palliative care. The opposition has stated time and time again how palliative care can be a good thing but just needs reform. This offers no direct clash with our plan and our line of argumentation throughout the entire debate. We recognize that palliative care as a viable option for patients, but we also have pointed out some of the pitfalls of palliative care and how PAS can be a benefit to those who have to suffer in these pits in some countries currently. Reform can be achieved in both PAS and palliative care under our plan. Fundamentally, we respect the preference of the patient to choose whichever option. The proposition is on the side of options and a death with dignity for citizens. We denounce the self-proclaiming moral arbiters that would force citizens to die only on the terms that they deem natural and right in the face of intense suffering and unbearable pain being felt by the patient.

2) Supporting PAS is not supporting the disproportional killing of coerced poor people and stigmatized groups. While this concern is certainly respectable, it is based simply on predicative fears. These fears have been discredited with the empirical evidence that we have provided from countries and states in which PAS is already supported. While we support these groups getting access to PAS, we certainly arent forcing them and neither is any outside party, as the data shows.

3) Supporting PAS is not supporting new cultural norms or ideologies that declare some lives are not worth living. What PAS promotes is that citizens are in control of the choice of how they want to end their lives. This idea finds opposition not in the prevailing attitudes of the people, but in the ideologies that someone or something should be in control other than the actual individual, whether it be the government, religion or someones definition of nature. It is time to break free from the shackles of these ideals into a world where citizens are individually empowered by supporting the right-to-die. Day by day more and more governments and citizens are recognizing this right and are strongly disavowing the antiquated positions that our opposition has argued for.

Now that we have removed what supporting assisted suicide is not, lets look at what it is:

1) Supporting PAS is supporting a system that addresses the highly personal and situational manner of this issue while enforcing ethical safeguards that protect against any form of abuse to the utmost degree possible. Both sides agree that laws can indeed change, but when should these laws should change is where the debate lies. We refuse to maintain archaic laws in which the consent of the patient and expertise of the doctor is largely ignored. We believe that to support PAS is supporting a flexible and ethical system that can address this complex situation with the patient and doctor in mind and at the forefront.

2) Supporting PAS is supporting the idea that it is the states role to create conditions where citizens can make optimal decisions for themselves amongst viable options. We do not support an atmosphere where the state destroys options and makes the decision for its citizens, especially on the most sacred thing a person has, life.

3) Supporting PAS is supporting a system that not only ends lives more humanely, but saves lives as well. We are not advocating a vast increase in quantity but rather a quality increase in organ donation. We have stated that if these terminally ill patients are forced to live prolonged lives, vital organs will become increasingly weaker even if the disease does not directly affect specific organs. The system allows organ donation to be completed more efficiently, effectively and even at all in some cases.

The proposition offers quality of life over just mere quantity, choice on how to preserve this quality, and a way to preserve life of many people on organ donation waiting lists. We strongly believe we offer a far better system for these very reasons, masterpiece or not.

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Do You Agree or Disagree With Euthanasia or Mercy Killing ...

View of the Belgian headquarters of the Brothers of Charity in Ghent (Photo: Getty)

The decision is 'disloyal, outrageous and unacceptable', Br Rene Stockman said

The decision to allow euthanasia in care homes run by the Brothers of Charity is deeply painful, the institutes Superior General has said.

In an articlefor the Catholic Herald, Brother Rene Stockman said the practice is utterly unworthy of us and called on the board of directors in Belgium to withdraw this decision.

For 200 years the Brothers of Charity, and our staff, have always sought to treat, cure, heal patients in ever better ways, he wrote.

Today, the profession continues to make progress in treating mental illness. Even when there is no total cure, we can always accompany the patient.

To use euthanasia as a kind of ultimate therapy would be utterly unworthy of us. It would be as if we were helping a patient who is on the verge of the abyss to take the leap of death, by giving him a little push.

The Vatican is presently investigating the decision by the groups largely lay board of directors to allow euthanasia in its 15 Belgian centres, which provide care for more than 5,000 patients a year.

Br Stockman described the move by the directors as disloyal, outrageous and unacceptable.

He also warned the move could gave unsettling legal implications.

Since Belgium legalised euthanasia, the institutions of the Brothers of Charity have always been safe places. We have simply said that euthanasia is impossible within the walls of our institutions. This policy could now be under threat.

He called for the centres to return instead to their original ethos.

[W]e can only hope and pray that this view is abandoned and that the absolute inviolability of life would again be the only option. That is the only thing that fits in with the charism of our Congregation. It is also what our beloved founder, the Servant of God Peter Joseph Triest, lived by and entrusted to us.

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Superior General strongly criticises Belgian order's decision to allow euthanasia in care homes - Catholic Herald Online

10 May 2017 | by Tom Heneghan The Belgian chapter decided in late April to allow assisted death, even for people not in the terminal stage of illness

Brother Ren Stockman, global head of the Brothers of Charity order, has condemned a decision by its Belgian branch to allow euthanasia in its 15 psychiatric hospitals the first time a Catholic institution would officially comply since it was legalised in 2002.

The Belgian chapter decided in late April to allow assisted death, even for people not in the terminal stage of illness. Its nine-page guidelines said staff should focus on protecting life but also respect the autonomy of patients who no longer want to live.

Because human situations are complex and ambiguous, no single choice of concrete action can fully match all values, the guidelines said. Neither value was absolute and doctor-patient dialogue would lead to the best solution.

The decision had been discussed for a year, Br Stockman said, and the committee that took it had a majority of lay people and only a few brothers as members.

Br Stockman a Belgian posted at the orders Rome headquarters, and a specialist in psychiatric care said he had raised the issue with Vatican authorities and the Belgian bishops conference. He told Catholic News Service: I am in contact with the Vatican - the Congregation [for Institutes] of Consecrated Life [and Societies of Apostolic Life] and the Secretary of State [Pietro Parolin] who asked me for more information I hope that there will come a clear answer from the Belgian bishops and the Vatican. I have trust in it.

Br Stockman also said he was hugely disturbed by Antwerp Bishop Johan Bonny, who said he had not read the guidelines in full but thought they were balanced. The Brothers, Bishop Bonny told Belgian television, have to find a modus vivendi between medical insights, moral judgement, public opinion and the prevailing culture in Belgium.

In an interview with the Dutch weekly 'Katholiek Nieuwsblad', Br Stockman recalled the law allows exceptions and that Brussels Cardinal Jozef De Kesel has insisted Catholic institutions can refuse euthanasia.

PICTURE:Activists take part in an anti-euthanasia protest in Brussels

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Superior condemns Belgian order's green light to euthanasia - The Tablet

Three animal control officers are accused of euthanizing dogs without sedating them at the Baytown animal shelter, the Harris County District Attorney's office announced Thursday, May 11, 2017.

Three animal control officers are accused of euthanizing dogs without sedating them at the Baytown animal shelter, the Harris County District Attorney's office announced Thursday, May 11, 2017.

Animal control officers charged with improper euthanasia of dogs in Baytown

Three animal control officers are accused of euthanizing dogs without sedating them at the Baytown animal shelter, the Harris County District Attorney's office announced Thursday.

Prosecutors say the employees' actions were caught on surveillance video at the city's Baytown Animal Control and Adoption Center. The trio faces charges of improperly euthanizing dogs.

"Even prisoners on death row have the right to besedated before they are put down by lethal injection," prosecutor Carvana Cloud said at a news conference Thursday. "In this case to see animals being treated so inhumanely ... was very disturbing. To watch them suffer was just horrifying."

Cloud said the video was not available for release. It may emerge during a trial.

The officers also stuffed the dogs' bodies into plastic bags without first checking the animals' vital signs to confirm they were dead, prosecutors said. Those incidents allegedly happened in May 2015.

One employee euthanized a blond terrier by injecting sodium pentobarbital without using anesthesia, leaving the dog to feel pain, according to charging documents. Prosecutors suspect it happened many more times.

"We know that it was an ongoing issue," Cloud said, calling the practice "inexcusable."

The animal shelter, located at 705 N. Robert Lanier Drive, closed for upgrades in early 2008 meant to keep diseases from spreading among the animals, the Chronicle reported at the time. The shelter in the city of about 75,000 euthanized 775 animals in just four months at the time -- an average of more than six every day.

The shelter saved just 9 percent of cats and 32 percent of dogs in the summer of 2015, according to data reported by the Baytown Sun-- about the same time the employees are accused of improper euthanasia. The "save rate" in the year ending Sept. 30, 2016, improved to 27 percent for cats and 57 percent for dogs.

In comparison, Houston's Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care shelter euthanized only 20 percent of animals in 2015, down from 80 percent a decade earlier, when it drew heavy criticism, the Chronicle previously reported. The Harris County shelter euthanized about 70 percent of animals.

Baytown police launched an investigation after a former employee complained that euthanasia procedures were violated at the animal control center, the district attorney's office said. Prosecutors said they worked with an expert in veterinary medicine and animal shelters.

"When people think of their local animal shelter, most are realistic and recognize that animals are being euthanized every day, but they don't want them to suffer," said Jessica Milligan, Harris County's top prosecutor for animal cruelty.

"The job of an animal control officer is not an easy job, but it requires compassion and empathy," Milligan added in the news release. "It's unfortunate that these particular officers didn't exhibit the compassion towards animals that we as a community expect and Texas laws require."

Tod Brooks, 53, Veronica Jimenez, 33, and Christopher Nightingale, 27, were charged Tuesday with one count each of improper animal euthanasia, a Class B misdemeanor under Texas' Health and Safety Code.

If convicted, the employees could face up to six months in jail and a fine up to $2,000.

Jimenez and Nightingale no longer work for the shelter, but Brooks was still employed as of Thursday, Cloud said.

Although Cloud said the animal shelter was operated by the county, a spokeswoman for the city of Baytown confirmed that the city oversees the facility.

As of Thursday morning, court documents did not list defense attorneys who could be reached for comment.

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Animal control officers charged with improper euthanasia of dogs in Baytown - Chron.com

The Longest Night By Otto de Kat Translated by Laura Watkinson MacLehose Press, 168 pages, $22.99

Emma, the sympathetic protagonist of Otto de Kats The Longest Night, is 96 and ready to say goodbye to her life. But first she will relive it, re-experiencing her emotions, debating her choices.

A nurse is at her side, and a euthanasia team is on its way. As Emma waits, her past and present converge. She drifts through labyrinthine memories of two husbands, two countries and two sons, of the terror of World War II and the painful recovery in its aftermath.

Her life had shattered into fragments, crystal clear, light and dark, an endless flow, de Kat writes in the novels opening pages. Time turned upside down, and inside out.

De Kat is the pen name of the Dutch publisher, poet, novelist and critic Jan Geurt Gaarlandt, a past winner of Hollands Halewijn Literature Prize. Hes not well known to American readers, but he should be. Its not surprising to learn that de Kat is also a poet; his linguistic gifts are evident. This is a lovely novel, at once psychological and historical, written in spare, elegant prose and beautifully translated by Laura Watkinson.

The Longest Night is the fifth in a series of interconnected World War II novels that share characters and plot points and draw on de Kats own family history. (The others are The Figure In The Distance, Man On The Move, Julia and News From Berlin.) Its dedication to the two daughters of Clarita and Adam von Trott and the memory of Christabel Bielenberg is also worth noting.

To students of the Nazi period, Adam von Trott is a familiar name, a German diplomat and Resistance member who tried in vain to convince the Allies of the possibility of a negotiated peace. He was executed (along with more than 4,000 others) after the failure of the July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Hitler.

Bielenberg was the British wife of Peter Bielenberg, a German lawyer who opposed the Nazi regime and was friendly with Adam von Trott. When Bielenberg was arrested and sent to a concentration camp after the coup attempt, his wife successfully pleaded his case to the Gestapo. Both husband and wife survived the war, and she wrote two memoirs before her death at 94.

Emmas backstory and narrative arc are different: She is Dutch, and her good German husband, Carl Regendorf, meets a darker fate than his real-life counterpart. But Bielenberg seems to have been an inspiration for the character (along with de Kats own mother).

After July 20, de Kat writes, Emma and Carl had lived in a pressure cooker of fear and tension, dreading every footstep and creaking floorboard. When Carl, meeting with von Trott, is taken by the Gestapo, Emma flees from suburban Berlin to a supposedly Nazi-free village in the Black Forest, to stay with a friends relatives.

After the war, a brutal journey takes her back to the Netherlands, where her mothers prosperous cousin lives. She arrives like a ghost, without Carl, parched with grief. But soon, at a dance club, she meets Bruno Verweij, a gentle man who stirs her enough to become her second husband.

They settle on a street in Rotterdam whose residents form a tight, mutually supportive community. Emmas relationship with Bruno isnt perfect she is romanced (and proselytized) by a pastor, and Bruno may still harbor feelings for a wartime love. Both his family and hers have a history of fractures (elucidated more fully in the earlier novels). But the marriage has solidity and endures.

The jangling of a phone, the taste of raspberries, the glint of a ring: These Proustian details inspire snatches of verse and pull Emma into the past, along a complex network of corridors, the crumpled map of her life.

De Kat re-creates the dangers and suspicions of the war years, the postwar awakening of Europes economies, the steady normalizing of relations between a Germany gleaming with prosperity and the rest of the world. Bruno wanders this new Germany as a Chamber of Commerce official, while Emma commits to [h]appiness as a task, as a duty.

The novels title refers to more than Emmas two nights of waking dreams. It turns out to be a quasi-mystical reference to a lifetime of somnolence. Awaiting death, Emma suddenly felt that she had been sleeping all her life, de Kat writes, as if she had slept through it, in fact.

To some extent, he seems to suggest, we are all like Emma, half-awake at best. Entangled in our personal and historical pasts, we sleepwalk through dramas of love and loss against the nightmare backdrop of circumstances largely beyond our control. Emmas cousin, before his death, is reading Schopenhauer, and the quote de Kat excerpts suggests a tragic balance between destiny and free will: Fate shuffles the cards, and we play.

Julia M. Klein, the Forwards contributing book critic, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circles Nona Balakian Citation For Excellence In Reviewing. Follow her on Twitter, @JuliaMKlein

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WWII Survivor Facing Euthanasia Relives Her Life - Forward