In the realm of contentious social issues, few topics evoke as much debate and emotion as Euthanasia. Many historians are of the belief that the euthanasia debate as we know it was triggered by the works of 19th century British scientists Charles Darwin, Francis Galton and Herbert Spencer, the former lending his name to the scientific ideology known as Social Darwinism.
On the subject of abortion few figures loom as large as Margaret Sanger. Born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 to a large provincial family in Corning, New York, she rose to prominence by campaigning for greater access to birth control for women. However, beneath the surface of what many in the day already regarded as her controversial activities lay an even darker side that can be summed up by two words. Euthanasia and… Eugenics.
In the annals of criminal history, few figures evoke as much horror and revulsion as Dr Harold Shipman, the British doctor who became the world’s most prolific serial killer. Dubbed the Angel of Death, Shipman’s heinous crimes shattered the trust between patients and physicians and sent shockwaves through the medical community.
It is a sad fact that the death of the fabled Greek philosopher Socrates has been hijacked by the Physician Assisted Dying (PAS) lobby. While Socrates did indeed take his own life, it was as a sentence imposed upon him for crimes, and not as an escape from ill-health.
Before being seriously damaged by a homemade bomb on July 6, 2022, the Georgia Guidestones in Elberton, Georgia, had drawn visitors from around the world and been the source of much controversy. The six giant slabs of granite were erected under a cloak of secrecy in 1980 and arranged to resemble the ancient standing stones found in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
For those of a certain age, we may remember sitting in a movie theater in the early Seventies with the strains of Grieg’s Peer Gynt echoing around us while on screen an aged and disillusioned Edward G. Robinson departed this life. Personally, I was seated in a small theater near Soho in London.
Whenever people hear the word Holocaust their thoughts usually turn to the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. Anyone who has seen the grim photos and newsreels cannot be left unchanged and filled with horror.
In the annals of criminal history, certain cases stand out not just for the magnitude of the crimes involved, but also for the apparent actions of a state to cover them up and absolve the perpetrator. There can perhaps be no more disturbing example than the case of Dr. John Bodkin Adams. Adams was a man whose polite demeanor and status as a physician masked a sinister reality.