By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A British author worried about the coming “silver tsunami” of elderly people says the only way to cope with this “invasion of terrible immigrants” is to erect euthanasia booths on every street corner where the aged can go to commit suicide.
Author Martin Amis made the remarks during an interview with The Sunday Times of London while discussing the coming wave of elderly Britains who form the post-World War II “baby boom” generation.
“How is society going to support this silver tsunami?” he said in an interview. “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,” he warned.
By 2033, 23 per cent of UK’s population will be 65 or over with the fastest increases in the “oldest old” segment of the population, those over 85 who will require the most care. By 2033, the 85-plus population is expected to double its current number to 3.2 million.
Amis’ solution to the problem is to erect “a booth on every corner where you could get a martini [lethal cocktail] and a medal.”
His support for this crude form of euthanasia comes from the slow and suffering deaths of a friend and family member.
His stepfather, Lord Kilmarnock, died last March at age 81: “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.”
About friend and fellow author Iris Murdoch, who died in 1999, two years after her husband said she had Alzheimer’s disease, Amis said: “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.”
He proposed: “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.”
Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented on this issue yesterday, saying: “If it was the goal of Martin Amis to gin up publicity on the eve of his new novel, The Pregnant Widow, he succeeded: his sick comments have received wide coverage in the U.K. But now he’s stuck with his mad idea, and attempts to walk it back are too late.”
Do we think Amis is going to start a campaign to establish death booths, Donohue asks. “No, but if someone followed up on his idea, we’re confident he wouldn’t lose a night’s sleep. In any event, we hope his dream world fantasy doesn’t migrate to our shores.”
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