Make It Legal?

Said a doctor at a recent doctors' meeting: "Anyone in the room who has never helped a suffering patient die, please raise his hand." No one did.

The Euthanasia Society of America, which vouches for the story, cites it as an indication that many doctors favor "mercy killing" in extreme cases. Last week the society started a widely backed drive to make euthanasia legal. It announced that 1,500 New York doctors and 54 eminent clergymen (among them: Union Theological Seminary's President Henry Sloan Coffin, Riverside Church's Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick) had joined in sponsoring a euthanasia bill which they hope to get introduced in the New York State Legislature.

Ringleader of this aggressive revival of an old argument: Dr. Robert Latou Dickinson, sprightly, 85-year-old president of the society, gynecologist, artist, marriage counselor. He had drawn a bill for "dignified, merciful" killing. Under it, any patient over 21 who found life unbearable could apply to a court for permission to die; if an investigating committee of doctors and laymen approved, his doctor would get authorization to end his life painlessly (e.g., by a narcotic). The bill would do nothing about imbeciles or children born monstrously deformed.

By week's end, the row was on. Objected Dr. Rolla E. Dyer, director of the National Institute of Health (in Cissie Patterson's Washington Times-Herald): "There is less & less reason every year for fear of old age. ... It is silly to talk about 'hopeless' [diseases] in these times." Cried Monsignor Robert E. McCormick, presiding judge of the ecclesiastical tribunal in New York's Catholic Archdiocese: "Anti-God, unAmerican, and a menace to veterans!"

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