What do Siberian tigers and older women have in common?

That is among the questions related to fighting diseases that affect both animals and people that physicians and veterinarians are teaming up to explore at a conference in New York on Saturday.

The "Zoobiquity" conference takes its name from a best-selling book by Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, a cardiologist at the UCLA Medical Center who said that about 60 percent of diseases found in humans also hit most animal species.

Scientists from medical hubs including the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the National Institutes of Health and The Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, will compare animal and human cases.

"I believe I'll learn something from human-line physicians Saturday that could be immediately applied on Sunday to my animal patients, and perhaps they'll learn things from me for their human patients," says Dr. Richard Goldstein, chief medical officer at New York's Animal Medical Center.

Sloan-Kettering's Larry Norton, a global authority on breast cancer, will present information on treatment for the disease prevalent in older women and among Siberian tigers and other large jungle cats.

Scientists will also discuss a male gorilla with a seizure disorder, tumors in domestic ferrets and a California sea lion with an eating disorder.

Another shared illness being examined is malaria, in both penguins and people, and how it spreads through populations of birds in the wilderness.

Goldstein pointed out that veterinarians are able to study innovative treatments on animals that might not be legally allowed on humans. Some of those treatments are now being used on humans, including a melanoma cancer vaccine developed for dogs at Animal Medical Center being used on Sloan-Kettering patients.

"Animals are models for human diseases and because their life spans are shorter, the progression of a disease is more obvious," says Goldstein.

Especially useful to human medicine is how veterinarians approach behavioral and psychological problems, since their patients don't talk — just as humans with dementia or Alzheimer's may not be able to communicate.

"Vets are treating animals with anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorders, eating disorders, addictions — like wallabies in Tasmania eating poppies," says Natterson-Horowitz. "They look at environmental and genetic factors, and stress, and that informs the human cases."

Natterson-Horowitz started the animal-human medical dialogue about a decade ago when the Los Angeles Zoo asked the UCLA professor to help them tackle heart conditions in some great apes.

"I was a typical cardiologist, dealing with heart attacks, atrial fibrillation and high cholesterol," she says. "That opened my eyes to the concept of one health: All doctors can be thought of as veterinarians since all patients are animals."

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fa?s:V?q?ssans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:red;mso-fareast-language: EN-GB'>medical law and ethics at Oxford University, believes children couldn't possibly have the capacity to make an informed decision about euthanasia since even adults struggle with the concept.

"It often happens that when people get into the circumstances they had so feared earlier, they manage to cling on all the more," he said. "Children, like everyone else, may not be able to anticipate how much they will value their lives if they were not killed."

There are others, though, who argue that because Belgium has already approved euthanasia for adults, it is unjust to deny it to children.

"The principle of euthanasia for children sounds shocking at first, but it's motivated by compassion and protection," said John Harris, a professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester. "It's unfair to provide euthanasia differentially to some citizens and not to others (children) if the need is equal."

And Dr. Gerlant van Berlaer, a pediatric oncologist at the Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussels hospital, says the changes would legalize what is already happening informally. He said cases of euthanasia in children are rare and estimates about 10 to 100 cases in Belgium every year might qualify.

"Children have different ways of asking for things, but they face the same questions as adults when they're terminally sick," van Berlaer said. "Sometimes it's a sister who tells us her brother doesn't want to go back to the hospital and is asking for a solution," he said. "Today if these families find themselves (in that situation), we're not able to help them, except in dark and questionable ways."

The change in the law regarding people with dementia is also controversial.

People now can make a written declaration they wish to be euthanized if their health deteriorates, but the request is only valid for five years and they must be in an irreversible coma. The new proposal would abolish the time limit and the requirement the patient be in a coma, making it possible for someone who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's to be put to death years later in the future.

In the Netherlands, guidelines allow doctors to euthanize dementia patients on this basis if they believe the person is experiencing "unbearable suffering," but few are done in practice.

Dr. Patrick Cras, a neurologist at the University of Antwerp, said people with dementia often change their minds about wanting to die.

"They may turn into different people and may not have the same feelings about wanting to die as when they were fully competent," he said. "I don't see myself killing another person if he or she isn't really aware of exactly what's happening simply on the basis of a previous written request (to have euthanasia). I haven't fully made up my mind but I think this is going too far."

Penney Lewis, a professor and medical law expert at King's College London, agreed that carrying out euthanasia requests on people with dementia once they start to worsen could be legally questionable.

"But if you don't let people make decisions that will be respected in the future, including euthanasia, what you do is encourage people to take their own life while they have the capacity or to seek euthanasia much earlier," she said.

In the past year, several cases of Belgians who weren't terminally ill but were euthanized — including a pair of 43-year-old deaf twins who were going blind and a patient in a botched sex change operation — have raised concerns the country is becoming too willing to euthanize its citizens. The newest proposals have raised eyebrows even further.

"People elsewhere in Europe are focused on assisted dying for the terminally ill and they are running away from what's happening in Belgium," Lewis said. "If the Belgian statutes go ahead, this will be a key boundary that is crossed."