Euthanasia, the ultimate abandonment

In this issue we are pleased to publish the address given recently by Mrs Rita Marker of the Anti-euthanasia Task Force (USA) at a press conference in the House of Commons in London. It offers a most informative update on the development of euthanasia discussion in the United States. We must be grateful that the situation elsewhere is different. In Germany, as a recent correspondent told the Editor, the memory of euthanasia under the Nazis is still too fresh for there to be such a development. Even in Holland there are moves to develop a hospice programme, to offer a radically alternative approach to terminal care. Yet in Britain the idea of the living will is beginning to catch on, and we do well to take note of how it is being used in the United States as a gateway to euthanasia.