April 18 CALIFORNIA: Bill on doctors' execution role----A measure to prohibit physician participation clears Assembly panel. Sparked by controversy over the planned execution of convicted killer Michael Angelo Morales, proposed legislation to bar physicians from participating in capital punishment cleared its 1st legislative committee Monday. Assembly Bill 1954 would prohibit physicians from attending executions in an official capacity, monitoring vital signs, determining an inmate's point of death, or prescribing, administering or supervising the injection of lethal medication. Proponents said AB 1954 would not prevent the state from carrying out executions by using non-physician personnel. "This legislation is not about the death penalty," said Assemblyman Alan Nakanishi, R-Lodi, an eye surgeon by profession and a co-author of AB 1954. "This measure is totally about the medical profession." But others said there is no way to divorce AB 1954 from debate over Morales' proposed execution or controversy over the death penalty itself. Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said a 2-pronged attack seems to be emerging against the death penalty. Morales' lawyers have raised the legal argument that doctors should participate in executions to ensure that medications are dispensed properly in compliance with inmates' constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. But AB 1954 would make it illegal for doctors to play any role, Barankin noted. "When you put the 2 together, you've invalidated the death penalty in California," he said. AB 1954 passed the Assembly Business and Professions Committee by obtaining the bare minimum 6 votes needed. Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Garden Grove, said he cast the final affirmative vote as a courtesy, to continue discussion. If the measure is not amended before reaching the Assembly floor, Tran said, "I would vote against it." Critics of AB 1954 complained Monday that it could open a Pandora's box by banning doctors from participating in a particular procedure, even if their conscience dictates otherwise. Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, called AB 1954 a "slippery slope" that could be precedent-setting in future debates over issues ranging from abortion to the dispensing of emergency contraceptives by pharmacists who object to them. Canciamilla argued that current state law does not compel any physician to participate in executing a prison inmate. "Why the need for a state law?" Canciamilla said. "Why not simply say, as a matter of state policy, we're not going to (force doctors to) participate in any way, shape or form?" The question of physician participation in capital punishment sprang from the case of Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981 rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell of Lodi. Morales' attorneys initially challenged California's execution process, claiming it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment because inmates might have been conscious when they received an excruciatingly painful cocktail of lethal drugs. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ultimately ruled that Morales could be put to death with participation by a "licensed medical professional," such as a physician, surgeon, nurse or other medical technician. Prison officials halted the execution Feb. 21, shortly before Morales was to die, partly because they could not find a medical professional willing to assist. AB 1954, pushed jointly by Nakanishi and by Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, is sponsored by the California Medical Association. "If physicians were allowed to participate in executions, or become executioners, it tarnishes the profession," said Francisco Silva, a CMA spokesman. "A physician, as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life, should not be a participant in an execution," the CMA said in a letter supporting AB 1954. CMA also argues that assisting with executions could pose a moral dilemma: If an inmate did not immediately die from lethal drugs, would a physician be obligated to kill the person or to save that person's life? California has every right to bar physicians from participation, Lieu said. "Because it's a state-controlled activity, the state can decide who it allows in and who it will not allow in," said Lieu, who does not contest the state's general right to execute condemned prisoners. Barankin said the state's protocol for capital punishment requires that a physician determine the point of death. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, a Mountain View Democrat who has proposed separate legislation to impose a temporary moratorium on executions, said AB 1954 indirectly could help her effort. "Anything that keeps raising the issue helps," Lieber said. Harriet Salarno, president of Crime Victims United, said AB 1954 could create a Catch-22: A judge could order physician participation and the state could not legally comply. "Why are we doing this?" she said. "It just seems it's for one reason - to stop the death penalty." Mack Winchell, father of Morales' victim, said the state should not interfere with capital punishment. "I'm thoroughly disgusted with them bringing this all up," he said. "Go ahead and execute him. He's already had 25 years to think about what he did to my daughter." (source: Sacramento Bee) ILLINOIS: THE RYAN VERDICT: A MIXED LEGACY----History will offer final verdict; Death Row stand, conviction keys in complicated career On a January day ushered in with the hopes that only change can bring, George Ryan stood on a Springfield stage for his inauguration as governor seven years ago, mindful that many voters considered him little more than a high-profile relic of Illinois' political cronyism. "When my time comes, the people of Illinois will decide and judge my place and my legacy in history," Ryan said in his lone inaugural address as governor. Now, in a sweeping guilty verdict, the people--represented by a federal court jury--have cast judgment on Ryan's fate. Ryan was one of the last and greatest practitioners of old-school politics in Illinois, a powerful dealmaker whose style of taking care of friends and allies ultimately led to his conviction. Yet, his political pragmatism turned into a political progressivism that led him to use his final hours as governor to open the doors of death row and award clemency to 167 condemned inmates. The federal jury's decision Monday "is not in accordance with the kind of public service I've given to the people of Illinois over 40 years," Ryan said. The question of whether Ryan's conviction will represent his final legacy is as complicated as the man himself. Had Ryan's political career ended in 1983, after serving as Illinois House speaker and running as Gov. Jim Thompson's choice for lieutenant governor, his legacy might have been that of a 1-time Kankakee pharmacist turned powerful heartland Midwestern conservative who single-handedly blocked the state's ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Had his public career ended in 1990, as he embarked upon his candidacy for secretary of state, Ryan may have been the man known for leading the fight for a ban on semi-automatic weapons after having spent years enjoying the support of the state's gun-owner rights lobby. And had there not been a federal investigation that dogged him through his 1998 campaign for governor and the four years he served as the state's chief executive, Ryan's legacy would endure greater today in the national debate over the death penalty. "It's a mixed legacy," said Charles Wheeler, a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Springfield. "There's the cloud hanging over his head that there were lapses in his stewardship at the [office of] secretary of state and those lapses contributed to the deaths of little kids. As the head of the office, he's ultimately responsible." Although Wheeler maintains that the conviction represents "a very black mark against his public service," he said it would be wrong to say that Ryan's tenure in public service was totally without merit. He points to his decision to confront the death penalty as well as such moves as vetoing a bill to ban taxpayer-funded abortions because "the easiest thing for a conservative would be to sign" it. But Mike Lawrence, who heads the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, said the conviction will be "the main thing people remember." He noted that the late former Democratic governor and federal judge Otto Kerner was remembered more for his federal bribery conviction than for heading the famed Kerner Commission, which noted the nation's great racial divide in the late 1960s. Yet Lawrence also agreed that Ryan's decision to confront the flawed death penalty system is "going to be viewed as a very positive step" because he took on a problem that no one wanted to deal with or acknowledge. "Even those who favor the death penalty have to respect the fact that his action helped dramatize the weaknesses in the system," said Lawrence, who like Wheeler is a former Statehouse reporter. If anything, Ryan may have demonstrated the importance of timing in politics. His decision to cling to a politics of the past, guided by a clout-heavy spoils system of helping supporters and punishing opponents, clashed with a modern-era desire by the public to see government run efficiently without political favoritism. Ryan often talked of what he called his humble beginnings as a pharmacist in the family drugstore in Kankakee during the 1960s. It was in the rear of the pharmacy, however, where he also learned the art of political backroom dealing from local officials and business leaders who gathered over cards. Even before Ryan's trial, the longshadow of corruption that kept him from seeking a 2nd term also dragged the state's Republican Party down. The scandals of the Ryan administration ended the Republicans' 26-year hold on the governor's office and with it eliminated a strong GOP bench that had graduated several starters to statewide office. The loss of the governor's office also created a leadership void that has accentuated the great divide of a party split between its moderate and conservative wings. Yet, those scandals also may have sensitized the public to pay more attention to allegations of political corruption--or, at the very least, may have created the perception among politicians that the public would be more vigilant. Slowly, state legislators have embraced ethics legislation, though the reforms still remain modest compared with other states. "You're asking politicians to change a system that has gotten them elected and put them in power," Lawrence said. "For them to change that system, they have to perceive there's a greater penalty for staying with the status quo than to change." (source: Chicago Tribune) **************** Jurors say plenty of evidence but no smoking gun in Ryan case Jurors said Monday there was no "smoking gun" that led them to find former Gov. George Ryan guilty of federal corruption charges and that they followed the judge's orders to begin deliberations anew after 2 of their colleagues were dismissed. One of those dismissed jurors, Evelyn Ezell of Chicago, decried the verdict, saying she believed some of the jurors came into the deliberations presuming the defendants' guilt. She said had she stayed on the jury, it likely would have been hung on some counts. "I don't feel that the jurors were fair and impartial when you go into deliberations saying things like, 'If the rest of his cronies are guilty and they can go to jail why can't he?' I mean, things like that were said," said Ezell, who called her dismissal from the jury the result of a misunderstanding over what she was required to disclose on a jury questionnaire. The jury, which sat through five months of testimony and reached its decision after 11 days, became a story in itself in the last several weeks after news reports that Ezell and another juror had arrest records they had not disclosed to the court. U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer dismissed those jurors after 8 days of deliberations and replaced them with 2 alternates. The "unusual developments" in the jury room are among a number of factors the defense will use to try to get the verdict overturned, Ryan attorney Dan Webb said. Even before the jurors' dismissals, the jury had hinted at turmoil in notes to the judge, who had instructed them to treat each other "with dignity and respect." On Monday, though, jurors downplayed any friction, saying that things got heated both in the original deliberations and on the 2nd try. Kevin Rein, a self-employed carpenter from Glen Ellyn, acknowledged some disagreements. "We argued evidence versus opinion versus memory. That's why we asked for certain transcripts. It was important enough to argue about," Rein said. Ezell said she was the subject of some of the disagreements because she was not going along with her colleagues. She also said she was somewhat relieved to go home "because there was a lot of misconduct and name calling and things like that going on." Pallmeyer excused Ezell following a Chicago Tribune report that she may have failed to disclose past arrests. Public records show Ezell's birth date and Social Security number match a woman with a similar name who had been charged with drug possession and other offenses but never convicted. The jurors who found Ryan guilty agreed there was no single piece of evidence that clinched the conviction of the former governor and his longtime friend, lobbyist Larry Warner. Instead, they said they considered testimony on tax issues, the diversion of campaign money to Ryan family members and aborted investigations by the inspector general's office when Ryan was secretary of state. "There's a whole lot of stuff out there. You can pretty much take your pick," said juror James Cwick. Cwick said one of the witnesses that hurt Ryan was his imprisoned former top aide, Scott Fawell. Fawell, who is serving a 6 1/2-year federal racketeering sentence, agreed to be the government's leadoff witness against Ryan to get a break for his fiancee when she is sentenced on corruption charges. Rein said he would like to have heard from Ryan, who did not testify in his own defense. And even though Ryan had famous anti-death penalty activists testify as character witnesses, Rein said the former governor's role as a leading opponent of the death penalty played no role in the deliberations. (source: Associated Press) MISSOURI: Federal Appeals Court Hears Argument in Execution Case Lawyers for a Missouri death row inmate want to depose a doctor and nurse involved in prisoner executions. Lawyers for Michael Taylor of Kansas City also want to put on a defense witness who is an expert in pharmacology. A federal appeals court panel in St. Louis heard arguments today in the case and promised a prompt decision whether to remand the case to federal district court for more testimony. The defense team is not asking that Taylor's life be spared, but rather, a chance to show that a drug combination used in executions in Missouri -- and across the country -- amounts to unconstitutional cruel punishment. The state argued against what is says would be "opening the door to this exception in every case." (source: The Associated Press) ********************* Defense: medical deposition critical to lethal injection argument Lawyers for a death row inmate said Tuesday they want to depose a doctor and nurse involved in Missouri executions so they can argue their case that a drug combination used to kill condemned prisoners is unconstitutionally cruel punishment. But the state has blocked it - in part over concerns medical personnel would be harassed. The defense said it has agreed to shield their identity. The defense team is not seeking a reprieve of the death penalty for convicted killer Michael Taylor of Kansas City. Attorney Donald Verrilli, Jr., of Washington, told a federal appeals court panel in St. Louis that the three-drug cocktail used in Missouri and around the country could result in a "horrible, excruciating death" if the anesthesia doesn't take effect or wears off. Similar arguments are being made in death penalty cases around the country. But the defense in this case offered an alternative: a single high dose of barbiturate, said to be constitutionally permissible and attain the same result. Verrilli asked the three-judge panel to send the case back to U.S. District Court in Kansas City to be heard by the original judge assigned to the case. In January, a hearing to weigh the cruel punishment argument was transferred from Judge Scott O. Wright to Judge Fernando Gaitan because Gaitan's schedule could accommodate it more quickly. At the close of the hastily convened, two-day hearing, Gaitan ruled that Missouri's execution protocol is constitutionally permissible. Taylor's defense team said it needs the testimony of the doctor and nurse involved in state executions to argue the case. The defense also wants to present a witness who couldn't make Gaitan's hearing. The defense said that Sri Melethil, an expert in the science of how drugs act in the body over time, would rebut the state's witness, Dr. Mark Dershwitz. Dershwitz has testified that more than enough of the first drug - the sedative sodium pentothal - is given to a condemned prisoner before the second is administered. He has said that it would be "horrible" to administer the 2nd and 3rd drugs to an awake person. Taylor had been scheduled to be executed Feb. 1 in the 1989 kidnapping, rape and murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison of Kansas City. An appeals court panel denied Taylor's stay of execution, but the full appeals court stayed it. The U.S. Supreme Court, including Justice Samuel Alito on his first day on the high court, refused to lift it. Solicitor Jim Layton of the Missouri Attorney General's office argued that allowing the defense to depose the nurse and doctor involved in executions would "open the door to this exception in every case." He said the state wants to settle the lethal injection protocol question "so we don't have to litigate these questions every time." Layton said the state doesn't believe any additional testimony is needed. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments next week in a case brought by Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill about the procedure for lethal injection challenges to be filed in federal court. But the justices refused in February to directly consider whether the drug combination used in executions across the country amounts to unconstitutionally cruel punishment. The execution method is used by the federal government and every state that has capital punishment, except for Nebraska. Interest in lethal injection has escalated in recent months. The parents of both Michael Taylor and Ann Harrison attended Tuesday's hearing. Janel and Bob Harrison said afterward the hearing did not illuminate a case that has dragged on. "There won't ever be closure," Janel Harrison said. George and Linda Taylor and their family sat across the aisle. Afterward, the Taylors said they pray everyday for the Harrisons' healing and for their son's life to be spared. "Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" Linda Taylor asked. Attorneys for 4 other condemned prisoners were expected to file suit Wednesday in federal court in St. Louis challenging Missouri's lethal injection method. (source: Associated Press) NORTH CAROLINA: Judge OKs execution despite claim of suffering The state may go ahead with an execution because it has taken sufficient precautions to ensure that a murderer will remain unconscious after lethal drugs are injected, a federal judge said Monday. Lawyers for Willie Brown Jr. had said there was a chance he could awaken but be paralyzed and suffer pain. The state said a physician and a registered nurse would be present and would have a brain wave monitor to determine if Brown remained asleep. Brown, 61, is scheduled to die Friday for the 1983 slaying of a woman during a convenience store robbery. U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard had said in an order issued 10 days earlier that he would stop the execution if the state didn't prove to him that medical personnel could keep Brown from waking up after the lethal drugs were injected. Prison officials said a doctor and a nurse who usually are present in the observation room with a heart monitor also would observe a brain monitor. North Carolina would be the 1st state to use a brain wave monitor to ensure an inmate remains unconscious during an execution, a Department of Correction spokesman said. (source: Chicago Tribune) FLORIDA: Defense attorneys ask for change of venue in Lunsford trial Defense attorneys for the convicted sex offender accused of raping and killing 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford have asked to move the trial elsewhere because of the publicity the case has drawn. The motion on behalf of John Evander Couey, 47, was filed Monday and could be heard Friday at a status hearing before Circuit Judge Ric Howard. "The pretrial publicity in this case has been and is so extensive that the community in Citrus County has been exposed ... so pervasively that prejudice, bias and preconceived opinions are the natural result," defense attorney Dan Lewan wrote in the motion. Couey is accused of kidnapping, raping and killing the Homosassa girl, whose body was found last March behind a home the suspect shared with his sister. Couey has pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder, burglary, kidnapping and sexual battery. The state is seeking the death penalty. Prosecutors say they will concede it's necessary to move the trial. "I would be hard-pressed to find members of the (community) who haven't been impacted by her death and will be able to be a legally fair and impartial juror," Assistant State Attorney Pete Magrino said. Outrage over the crime prompted the Legislature to pass a bill establishing a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life behind bars for people convicted of certain sex crimes against children 11 and younger, with lifetime tracking by global positioning satellite after they are freed. (source: Florida Times-Union) USA: Patients seeking transplants turn to China -- Rights activists fear organs are taken from executed prisoners Dying of liver cancer, with less than a year to live, Eric De Leon flew to Shanghai and paid $110,000 for a transplant. The San Mateo father of six learned in May 2005 that he had liver cancer. Chemotherapy seemed to knock out the tumors, but in January a scan turned up 9 more and he was taken off the transplant list. Too risky, his doctors said. The cancer would probably return in the new organ, the doctors told De Leon, 50, a construction superintendent who cried when he learned of his prognosis. He wanted to be around for his youngest children, who are 3 and 5 years old, and help put them through college. But the cancer would also probably return after the treatments his doctors were recommending -- so he decided to go outside the U.S. health care system. De Leon researched overseas transplant centers on the Web, chose Yeson International Healthcare in bustling Shanghai and began a blog. The liver he received last month came from a 20-year-old, doctors told him. Hundreds of Americans and other foreigners are now finding their last, best chance for survival with organ transplants in China, where businesses are opening to meet international demand. Roughly 17,000 Americans needed liver transplants in 2004; only 6,100 patients received them, based on availability, their risk of dying in surgery, their chances for long-term survival and other factors. It is unknown how many Americans are now going to China, India, the Philippines and other developing countries for transplants they cannot get in this country. American doctors caution their patients against going overseas for transplants because the organs may not be screened for infectious diseases and the quality of care after surgery is questionable. Human rights activists raise ethical concerns about China in particular, saying transplant doctors there who cater to foreigners may be harvesting organs from executed prisoners without their permission, just for financial gain. De Leon said his donor could have been in a car accident or was brain dead for another reason. "I checked on the laws there," he said, noting that donors and their families would have been required to sign waivers. "They didn't shoot someone so I could have a liver," said De Leon, who praised the quality of care at the hospital in Shanghai. The facility had new medical equipment, but the rooms were worn, with chipped paint and crank-up beds and often no remote control for the television, De Leon said. Most members of the staff did not speak English, so he used hand gestures to communicate. New regulations going into effect in July will explicitly forbid the buying and selling of organs in China and require donors to give written permission for their organs to be transplanted, although Chinese Embassy spokesman Chu Maoming in Washington, D.C., said organs already are harvested ethically. "The organs come from ordinary citizens who voluntarily give them," Chu said. Critics of the new regulations say that they still fail to address the source of organs, the administration of organ donations or the definition of "brain dead" -- and that they apply only to live donors. Chinese officials have confirmed that executed prisoners have been among the sources of organs for transplants, according to the U.S. State Department's annual human rights report released in March. The report questions whether anyone obtained meaningful or voluntary consent from the prisoners or their relatives before the organs were harvested. So far, watchdogs haven't been able to determine how many transplants Chinese doctors have conducted on foreign patients because the Chinese government does not release such figures. The human rights group Amnesty International estimated in 2004 that at least 3,400 people were executed in China and 6,000 sentenced to death. The totals could be much higher; Chinese authorities keep national statistics on death sentences and executions secret. Amnesty has repeatedly reported the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners and called for the Chinese government to forbid the practice if prisoners haven't given free and informed consent. Adherents of Falun Gong, the spiritual movement banned in China, have accused the government of harvesting organs from thousands of the movement's followers in Liaoning province, charges that the U.S. State Department has urged the Chinese government to investigate. Harry Wu, a human rights activist and founder of the China Information Center in Virginia, notes that Chinese, by culture and tradition, want to die whole. "They don't have a concept to donate body parts to other people," Wu said. This deep reluctance, the high number of executions and the thriving transplant business add up to one conclusion, he said: "The death penalty is the base of (China's transplant) program." In contrast, federal prisoners on death row in the United States are not allowed to donate their organs because it is assumed their incarceration impairs their freedom to consent. For prisoners on state death rows, the laws vary. In any case, many prisoners are medically unsuitable to donate organs because they carry transmissible illnesses such as HIV or hepatitis. Going to China for organ transplants is "reprehensible," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "I understand people are desperate and want organs," Caplan said. "But there is a problem of dirty hands. It's not like there's a national assistance program of Chinese organs to the needy of the world. It's the rich who go and say, 'I'm going to look the other way.'" In September, Daniel Farley of Sebastopol also received a liver transplant at Yeson in Shanghai, a booming commercial and cultural center in China. He grappled with the knowledge that the organs could have come from an executed prisoner. "I'm a fairly liberal guy, and it's not the greatest thing to think about," said Farley, 57. "But when you're faced with a certainty -- and (the donors) have a certainty -- it's easier to take. Either someone was sentenced to die or it was their time." However, the organs should be suspect because their origin often remains a mystery, doctors say. "What was the health of the donors?" asked Robert Gish, division chief of hepatology and complex gastroenterology at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. "It's not as well defined as in the United States. It's also not clear, the circumstance of a donor's death." Yeson International Healthcare, which provided both De Leon's and Farley's transplants, was one of the first in China to offer such services to foreigners, said Tony Lee, the company's senior medical consultant. Founded in 2000, Yeson now serves about 20 Westerners and up to 100 patients from Taiwan each year, he said. "People come here because they're desperate, and we offer them a chance of living," Lee said in a telephone interview. "That's why they come here, because of something we have here and nowhere else is offering." Yeson contracts with a hospital in Shanghai, which in turn handles the donation process with a government agency, said Lee, adding that the company follows Chinese regulations. "We do the service part," Lee said. The China International Organ Transplant Center, founded in 2003, also in Shanghai, performs more than 100 kidney transplants and more than 20 liver transplants each year, according to its Web site, which is written in English, Russian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. A kidney transplant at China International costs $62,000, a liver $98,000 to $130,000, a lung transplant $150,000 to $170,000 and a new heart $130,000 to $160,000. A month after his transplant, De Leon said he feels great, though he has some numbness at the stitches across his abdomen. He still has a high risk of recurrence of liver cancer, his doctors say. "We'll look after Eric and see how he does," said Nathan Bass, medical director of liver transplants at UC San Francisco. "Hopefully he'll be one of the lucky ones." De Leon plans to take off another month or two before going back to work on remodeling projects in high-rise buildings. He also wants to write a book of advice for people going to China for transplants. Several patients and their families already have contacted him after coming across his blog. "We want to help if we can," De Leon said. "What else can you do? People are dying." Transplant tales: to China and back Eric De Leon and his wife, Lori, wrote about his experience in China undergoing a $110,000 liver transplant in March, which they financed with a loan on their San Mateo home. Following are some of the entries from their Web log at newfilter.blogspot.com: March 2: Well we made it to Shanghai after a long 13 1/2 hour flight. ... The coordinator Tony met us at the airport and escorted us to the hotel. We started our first full day by meeting with Dr. Fan the leading Transplant Surgeon. ...Then the rest of our day was full of Tests, Tests, and more Tests. March 14: Well hopefully this is it. We received a call today saying that they had an organ match ... FINALLY!! Of course the screening still needs to be done. March 15: One of the surgeons inquired on if we wanted to see the liver they removed from Eric. I told him yes. We went down to the surgery floor and the surgeon brought a large bowl with a huge roast. Really, Eric's liver was huge. The doctor said his liver was twice the size of a normal liver. This size was due to the Hep C and the cancer. The average liver weighs around 3 pounds Eric's was all of 6 pounds ... March 17: The doctor told Eric that he was very lucky. He received a 20-year-old liver. Young and healthy. Hmmm ... Maybe that's why Eric is feeling so good already! He's already bored out of his mind. Partly due to the fact that he hasn't been able to sleep much. Plus he's a little paranoid. He thinks the nurses are screwing around with him. Tony said the paranoia is normal and is actually one of the side effects of the anti-rejection medicine. I think it might also have a little to do with the fact that there is a bit of a language barrier. March 31: The normal meal Eric receives consists of 2 bowls of rice, and a banana. Along with that he also receives a dish of meat. ... Today's menu, for example, consisted of the following. Breakfast: meat bun and milk or fried shredded pork and pickled green noodles with egg. Lunch: braised weever with brown sauce (does anyone know what that is?), salted egg with minced pork, or stewed shredded eel and bamboo shoots. Supper: Gingeli and sliced fish. ... April 3: It is now day number 19 since Eric's liver transplant. He is doing fantastic! Looking at him in the picture with the leading liver surgeon here at the hospital, who would ever think that he had just undergone such a life-saving operation? Eric is being released today and not a day too soon. We are being told continuously that he has recovered remarkably fast. (source: San Francisco Chronicle)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----CALIF., ILL., MO., N.C., FLA., USA
Rick Halperin Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:38:28 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
