[Peace-discuss] Demented Brit outdoes death panels

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Make euthanasia readily available, says Amis
	Britain needs to deal with ‘population of demented old people’,
	says novelist BY SOPHIE TAYLOR

The novelist Martin Amis, moved by the recent deaths of his stepfather Lord 
Kilmarnock and his fellow novelist and friend Iris Murdoch, has called for 
Britain to make euthanasia more readily available. "There should be a booth on 
every corner where you could get a martini and a medal," he said.

In an interview with Camilla Long for the Sunday Times Magazine, the author of 
Money, London Fields and - his latest, due next month - The Pregnant Widow, 
landed on the subject of Britain's ageing population. "How is society going to 
support this silver tsunami?" he asked.

"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, who is not so young himself any more - he has hit 60 - 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."

Iris Murdoch died in 1999, at the age of 79, two years after her husband 
revealed very publicly that she was suffering from Alzheimer's.

Said Amis: "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'. That famous quote. That awareness of loss is gone, 
the track is gone. You don't know the day you've spent watching Teletubbies; it 
just vanished."

Amis went on: "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."

His comments were condemned yesterday as "glib" and "offensive" by 
anti-euthanasia groups. Alistair Thompson, from the Care Not Killing Alliance, 
told the Guardian: "We are extremely disappointed that people are advocating 
death booths for the elderly and the disabled. How on earth can we pretend to be 
a civilised society if people are giving the oxygen of publicity to such proposals?

"What are these death booths? Are they going to be a kind of superloo where you 
put in a couple of quid and get a lethal cocktail?"

As for himself, Amis was more worried about the death of his talent than the 
collapse of his body. "Medical science has again over-vaulted itself so most of 
us have to live through the death of our talent. Novelists tend to go off at 
about 70, and I'm in a funk about it. I've got myself into a real paranoid funk 
about it, how talent dies before the body."

Will reviews for The Pregnant Widow give him a new lease on life? He'll find out 
in the coming weeks.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/58786,people,news,make-euthanasia-readily-available-says-novelist-martin-amis

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