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Make euthanasia readily available, says Amis
Britain needs to deal with ‘population of demented old people’, says novelist
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. ·
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Michael Jose
Feel free to criticise me. No worries about that. However, you would do more good for your own cause if you offered rational critcism, rather a slightly incoherent jumble of ideas that suggest you disagree but do not really know why. Why do we need a euphemism for "intentional killing etc."? If it is the wish of the person why is it wrong? To bring in your points about wills and release (sic) of care etc was very silly; I said nothing about those things (and spent about 9 years looking after an elderly parent before she died of cancer). Your rather childish refrence to "going soft in the rational organ" makes you sound rather immature or unintelligent. You are as entitled to your opinion as much as anyone else, including me. I'm not sure the democracy of one man one vote is a good idea. I'd have a qualifying intelligence test.
Martin Amis? Sad man looking for cheap publicity. How much did he pay First Post for chunk of nastiness?
Oh yes TomNightingale? Since when has 'voluntary euthanasia' been anything other than a euphemism for intentional killing of another - of course, the motives are always good! Of course the fulfilling of the will and the release for care of one's erstwhile loved are the least of considerations! Let us not forget that the 'useless eaters' of the Hadamar gas chambers were all living relatively happy lives under the more Christian pre-Nazi era, and the atheist Hitlerites were merely fulfilling the Darwinian urge to build the master race. Were they civilised? I suppose there are degrees of civilisation, but perhaps they were just living off past glories.
I will worry about his sincerity when he really shows the first signs of going ga-ga - unless wishing the 'useless eaters' liquidation philosophy of the Nazis on the disabled and incapable (google on 'Hadamar') is already considered going soft in the rational organ. In which case it merely a matter of it being 'a great life if you don't weaken'...
How on earth can we claim to be a civilised society if we allow people to die lingering, agonising deaths against their wishes (either at the time or at the last time they were competent to make a rational judgement)? Many of those who oppose voluntary euthanasia do so for religious reasons. How on earth can we claim to be civilsed society if we treat such people as credible?