[LifeSiteNews] 22 Sep 2008--n an interview, Baroness Mary Helen Warnock has said that people suffering dementia have a duty to commit suicide.
Baroness Warnock, called the "philosopher queen", is regarded as Britain's leading moral philosopher. She said that she hopes people will soon be "licensed to put others down" who have become a burden on the health care system.
John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, wrote that Warnock's comments are "a regression to the brutal ancient world, when enforced suicide as a punishment was commonplace."
Warnock's ideas, however, can also be traced to a period of history much closer to our own. In his book "The Origins of Nazi Genocide: from Euthanasia to the Final Solution", US holocaust historian Henry Friedlander chronicled the growth and application of utilitarian and eugenic philosophies identical to Lady Warnock's.
Under the influence utilitarian eugenic philosophies, also called "social Darwinism", German officials in the 1930s instituted a program of mass euthanasia for persons the state considered undesirable, labelling them "lebensunwertes leben": life unworthy of life and "useless eaters." Among the groups targeted for euthanasia were developmentally disabled people, disabled children, and elderly people suffering from dementia.
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