Indah, a 24-year-old orangutan with remarkable intelligence and one of the Great Ape Trust of Iowa’s promising research stars, was euthanized on Nov. 11 after veterinarians concluded a terminal intestinal condition would claim her life in a week and her remaining days would be marked by excruciating pain.

There was no hand-wringing, no moral outcry, no politicizing the humane act authorized by Dr. Rob Shumaker, director of orangutan research at the Great Ape Trust. His relationship with Indah, whose name means “beautiful” in Indonesian, had been 20 years in the making, and his desire to see her suffering end was not unlike those of a growing number of Americans who believe medical ethics should allow humans who are terminally ill to choose a peaceful death.

Orangutans are much like people, sharing more than 95 percent of their genes with humans. They have keen communication skills, learn quickly, solve mechanical problems and exhibit creative behavior. “For better or worse, whether we like it or not, apes in captivity are considered to be property … and are not subject to the law forbidding the taking of life,” says Dr. Benjamin Beck, director of conservation at the Great Ape Trust and recently co-editor of a book on great ape ethics.

People, of course, are not property. Property is not generally considered to have rights, yet people, for whom certain rights are guaranteed, are denied control over their own destinies, a dilemma that didn’t exist prior to advancements in medicine and technology that have significantly increased life expectancy – and vulnerability to diseases resulting from their lifestyles.

“We treat our dogs and cats better than we treat our parents and grandparents,” says Paul Ellis Dysert – “The Biffer” to everyone who knows him. The past president of the Iowa chapter of End-of-Life Choices, the former Hemlock Society, the Marshalltown man has been active in the right-to-die movement for about three decades.

In Iowa, End-of-Life Choices is looking for sponsors for legislation patterned after Oregon’s 1994 referendum, which has been used by more than 170 people, most of them suffering from cancer, to end their lives since injunctions and other obstacles to its use were cleared in 1997. Oregon’s Death With Dignity Acts lets patients with less than six months to live to get a lethal dose of drugs after two doctors confirm the diagnosis and the patient’s mental competency.

Dysert isn’t kidding himself. “We bring it up knowing we’re going to lose,” he says. Voluntary euthanasia is such a political hot button he doubts the bill will even survive committee debate. He and others who support voluntary euthanasia are keenly aware the right to die with dignity is a lightning rod issue for conservative Christians, who helped President Bush win a second term.

The battle isn’t over in Oregon, which has the only law in the nation allowing physician-assisted suicide. The ink on his resignation letter was barely dry when U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft filed an appeal of a lower court ruling that the federal government could not punish Oregon doctors for prescribing lethal doses of federally controlled drugs. The Supreme Court is expected to decide early next year whether to review the case, about the same time proposed legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide begins its uphill climb through Iowa’s legislative chambers.

The debate won’t go away. It’s mainstream now. And an extraordinary orangutan who has contributed so much to science could help fuel it.