March 28, 2024

Novelist calls for euthanasia booths on “every corner”

Martin Amis criticised, labelled ‘glib’ and ‘flippant’

In a interview on the weekend, British
novelist Martin Amis proposed that “euthanasia booths” be placed on “every
corner” where the elderly and the demented can go out quietly, with dignity,
receiving a “martini and a medal”.

England would soon face a “civil war” in
Britain between the younger and older generations in 10 or 15 years’ time, he
believes. “They’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an
invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and
shops,” he told the Guardian.
His solution?
“There should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and
a medal.”

Critics have labelled Amis’ comments ‘glib’
and ‘offensive’.

Alistair Thompson, of the Care Not Killing
Alliance, described Amis’ comments as “very worrying”. “How on earth can
we pretend to be a civilised society if people are giving the oxygen of
publicity to such proposals?”

Fellow novelist Joan Brady told the Guardian on Monday that she viewed Amis’
comments as ‘flippancy’ and ‘prostitution’, questioning Amis’ ‘trivialising’ of
“a subject of enormous magnitude just to flog a book”. Her husband was killed
by a degenerative disease.

Amis contends that his comments were more ‘satirical’ than ‘glib’. He also
told the Guardian, “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.” ~ Guardian Jan 24, Jan 25

Jared Yee
euthanasia