Word: euthanasia
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...Netherlands is the only European country considering the legalization of euthanasia -- or mercy death, as the Dutch prefer to call it. Although euthanasia is illegal, Dutch physicians carry out an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 mercy deaths every year under a set of unofficial conditions: request of the patient, unbearable suffering, accord of the family and a second opinion by another physician. A panel of five provincial attorneys general reviews cases on a regular basis. In 1984 one of the smaller opposition parties proposed a law that would legalize euthanasia along the lines of present practice. The government...
...controversy over euthanasia goes to the heart of a traditional conflict in Dutch culture: strong religious faith, on one hand, vs. an instinct to use law and government as instruments of altruism. The issue points up a division between Dutch Protestants, many of whom favor euthanasia, and Catholics, many of whom oppose it on the ground that it is tantamount to murder. Above all, the argument demonstrates once again the Dutch compulsion to solve even the thorniest problems in the open, with the solution written into...
...ease. Pass the Butler is get this, a political drawing room satire of the English upper crust the turns into a murder mystery as well as a soap opera parody. Idle uses the opportunity to take pot shots Americans, the British government, and the class system while moralizing on euthanasia...
Dawson, who died in 1945, wrote that he acted on the wishes of the King's wife Queen Mary and his son the future Edward VIII, who abdicated eleven months later. Nonetheless, the story caused an uproar in Britain, where euthanasia is illegal. Kenneth Rose, George V's official biographer, accused Dawson of "murdering" the King, who was the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II. A spokesman for Buckingham Palace, which learned of the mercy killing from Watson on the eve of the publication of the notes, said only, "The events happened a long time ago, and all the main participants...
...reviews the influence of surrealists and dadaists without missing the historical joke: "They all wanted to destroy culture . . . and now they're part of our heritage." Arthur Koestler, a leading intellectual and novelist of the '30s and '40s, sounds weary and detached. "I'm vice president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society," says the author of Darkness at Noon. The following year, he and his wife Cynthia would carry out a joint suicide pact at their London residence...