Although experts believe that thousands of people each year help terminally ill relatives commit suicide, Mr. Rosoff said few are willing to talk about it.

Families hid their ill relatives in a cell at home or in a mental hospital.

The order calls for the removal of travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit seriously ill relatives in Cuba.

At the same time, there are calls from family members to protect mentally ill relatives.

A few mainlanders have also been allowed to come to Taiwan to visit ill relatives, but the focus has been on mainland scholars and students.

Next came flexible working hours, bigger pensions, better pay for women, child care and leaves of absence to care for newborn children or ill relatives.

Genetic Linkage studies attempt to find a correlation between the diagnosis and inheritance of certain alleles within families who have two or more ill relatives.

Timmy, they later learn, has fled his aged and ill relatives, believing he is a burden on their slim resources.

She recalled his telling her: "People like you in this situation have long abandoned their mentally ill relatives.

But they share something else as well: anger at the doctors who couldn't or wouldn't tell them all they really needed to know about their tragically ill relatives.