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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Monday, January 25, 2010

PARANOIA in the real world: The friendly euthanasia booth on the corner 

English novelist Martin Amis, doing publicity ahead of next week's publication of his new novel The Pregnant Widow, spoke to the Sunday Times of London. At the end of a long interview, Amis predicted an imminent demographic timebomb, a "silver tsunami" of old demented boomers. His suggested solution provided the grabber headline "Martin Amis calls for euthanasia booths on street corners":
“There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years’ time.”

Amis, himself 60 and a grandfather, added: “There should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal.”

The writer says his support for euthanasia has deepened since the deaths of Lord Kilmarnock, his stepfather, and Dame Iris Murdoch, the writer. Amis said: “My stepfather died very horribly last year ... He always thought he was going to get better. But he didn’t get better and I think the denial of death is a great curse.”

Murdoch died in 1999, aged 79, two years after her husband revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Amis said: “I’d known her a very long time, a friend, I loved her. She was wonderful. I remember talking to her just as it started happening, and she said, ‘I’ve entered a dark place’.” [...]

“There should be a way out for rational people who’ve decided they’re in the negative. That should be available, and it should be quite easy. I can’t think it would be too hard to establish some sort of test that shows that you understand.”

Would he kill himself? “There’s a certain point where your life slips into the negative. If you can recognise that point . . .”
In later comments to The Guardian, Amis clarified his comments were meant to be satirical rather than glib:
"What we need to recognise is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction. [...] Of course euthanasia is open to abuse, in that the typical grey death will be that of an old relative whose family gets rid of for one reason or another, and they'll say 'he asked me to do it', or 'he wanted to die', Amis said. "That's what we will have to look out for. Nonetheless, it is something we have to make some progress on."

Answering critics who said his comments were "offensive' to older people, Amis, a grandfather, said: "Well, I'm not a million miles away from that myself."

He added: "I had a friend who was desperately ill and she wanted to go to Switzerland, to Dignitas, but she was defeated by bureaucracy at this end. And, I think it is existentially more terrifying to feel that life is something you can't get out of.

"Frankly, I can't think of any reason for prolonging life once the mind goes. You are without dignity then."
Interesting, if not exactly supportive, discussion at Skeptic Exchange.

(Hat tip to GRWatson on Twitter.)
Posted by: Allen Varney / 5:20 PM

Comments:
With news this morning of Terry Pratchett calling for euthanasia tribunals (http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/4883683.Pratchett_calls_for_euthanasia_tribunals/), I have to admit the thought of suicide booths was also rattling around in my own brain.

The same thought was there two weeks ago, whilst reading an article about how Japan is trying to prevent delays to its otherwise near-perfectly punctual train system resulting from those of the 30,000 annual suiciders who try to end their lives by jumping in front of a train (http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY201001170198.html). Seriously, it's not like jumping in front of a train is particularly difficult, physically. Except in the UK, of course, where they are never in the right place at the right time - presumably because they're all stuck in the channel tunnel.
# posted by Anonymous Zild : February 01, 2010 8:49 AM
 
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