From the "What the ???" Files: British 'Moralist' says Dementia Patients Have a 'Duty to Die'

In 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.

She told the Church of Scotland's Life and Work magazine, "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives - your family's lives - and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service." In another article for a Norwegian periodical, titled "A Duty to Die?" she suggests, "There's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so [commit suicide] for the sake of others as well as yourself.In other contexts, sacrificing oneself for one's family would be considered good. I don't see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance."

Well I detect a large amount of demented thought here. Hitler would have loved this chick. Maybe we should get the net!

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."

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