Medicine: In Denmark

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When a man, ridden with an incurable malady, begs his doctor to kill him, no medical man can administer this last, inexorable and most gentle medicine without risking prosecution for murder, for manslaughter. Last week a bill was introduced into the Parliament of Denmark to permit medical Danes to prescribe death "if the action is undertaken in order to release a hopelessly sick person from severe and inevitable suffering."

Fact is, many poor folk in many countries fear that if they go to the hospital they will get the "black pill."

Fact also is, that in Scandinavia and in Germany it is common custom to administer fatal doses of morphine when two or more physicians agree that a case attended with extreme suffering is incurable. But a bill to legalize this practice failed in Germany three years ago.