The Right to Kill (Cont'd)

Fortnight ago the London Daily Mall published an anonymous confession by a "kind-eyed, elderly country doctor" stating that, for mercy's sake, he had done away with two defective newborns and three agonized adults (TIME, Nov. 18). Last week the storm of controversy and comment blown up by the Mail's story roared on in the world Press. In England famed William Ralph Inge, morose one-time dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, signed his name to an opinion that euthanasia (painless death) administered to incurables is "not contrary to Christian principles." This was also signed by three other churchmen including .St. Paul's present dean, Very Rev. Walter Robert Matthews.

In Buffalo, N. Y. an alert newshawk turned up a willing candidate for euthanasia. She was Anna Becker, 34, a one-time nurse who was badly hurt in an automobile crash two years ago. Her teeth were knocked out. Her gums had failed to heal, she could eat no solid food and because of unhealed internal injuries even liquid food caused searing pain. Her legs swelled and hurt if she stood on them for a few minutes. She had been awarded damages of $6,000, of which she had collected nothing because of an insurance guarantor's bankruptcy. At the reporter's instigation she dictated a letter to the Erie County Medical Association. Excerpts:

''In the name of mercy, I ask you to appoint a doctor to take my life. I am constantly in pain. I want to die. A competent physician could certainly kill me with less pain than I endure in an hour.

"For 749 horrible days since the crash, I have thought of death and would have taken my own life long ago if I had the courage.''

The medical society had an easy answer: the law forbade. Of three Buffalo clergymen of three different faiths, two expressed themselves in favor of euthanasia. In Washington, a U. S. Public Health surgeon declared that mercy killing was outlawed in this clause of the oath of Hippocrates: "If any shall ask of me a drug to produce death I will not give it nor will I suggest such counsel." In Kansas City, Mo., Dr. Logan Clendening (The Human Body), who likes to pooh-pooh the fears of hypochondriacs, said the question was outside the medical profession's province. In Chicago, Editor Morris Fishbein of the American Medical Association's Journal spoke his mind thus:

"Any dying person is irrational and not responsible for what he says. If he recovers, his attitude is entirely different. ... I deplore the publicity that this [Miss Becker's] case has received and I feel that no editor would have featured this extremely morbid story if it had been in his own family. It is very unhealthy for American psychology."

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