Amid the clamor of Jiang Zemin's visit and somber skies, the Harvard International Conference on Euthanasia began Saturday.

The two-day conference covered issues surrounding care at the end of life--including health law, hospice and palliative care, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.

The conference attracted many distinguished speakers and took a step towards bringing this discussion into the light.

Akilesh Palanisamy '98, the director of the conference, said that the topic of euthanasia was chosen because it is an issue that is both topical and of growing importance in the long term.

"With the coming vote of the Supreme Court on the legality of physician assisted suicide this issue is very pertinent," he said. "Also, as technology advances, this issue will only become more important for society."

The conference was sponsored by the Harvard Hippocratic Society--an under graduate organization that "seeks to broaden student's understanding of important health care issues facing the world today."

The society publishes the Journal of the Hippocratic Society in conjunction with MIT. The journal published an issue for the conference titled "End of Life Care and Decision Making."

The attendants included professors, students, doctors and lawyers, Palanisamy said. About about 300 people attended the event, coming from locales such as Canada and the Netherlands, he said.

"Overall, I was very pleased with the turnout of the conference," Palanisamy said.

'Not Dead Yet'

Even before the first keynote address began, the conference was being protested by "Not Dead Yet"--an organization of disabled individuals who oppose euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide on political grounds.

Feeling discriminated against on the grounds of "ablism," the protesters said they felt that approving assisted suicide for the disabled would move the medical establishment's focus away from treatment.

"People would rather kill me than give me the care I need," said Carol Celeigh, one of the protesters and a student at Northwestern.

Palanisamy said that the organizers tried to accommodate the protesters throughout the conference.

"It is important that they were here, and we tried to include them in the discussion as much as possible," he said.