From ABC News:

Ethicists and Alzheimer’s advocacy groups are expressing outrage over a comment made by a British philosopher this week that people with dementia have a “duty to die” to minimize the burden they place on their families and society.

Baroness Mary Helen Warnock made the remarks in an interview with the Church of Scotland’s Life and Work magazine. “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives — your family’s lives — and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service,” she said. The comment echoed an article titled “A Duty to Die?” that she had written for a Norwegian periodical.

“We dispute the fact that if you have dementia or some part of Alzheimer’s that you cannot have a quality lifestyle,” noted Paul Williams, director of public policy for the Assisted Living Federation of America. “We’ve seen in the last 10 years that these residents have been able to have the most independence and the quality of life that can be expected of them. … Just because you have a memory disease [doesn't mean] that we let you die and we can kill you.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 7:11 am and is filed under assisted suicide, elderly, eugenics, euthanasia/mercy killing, international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post