_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Another step toward suicide
Minister seeks pill for elderly
Not satisfied with having made the Netherlands the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia for the terminally ill, the Dutch Health Minister has said she would be open to considering new legislation that would allow elderly persons who are “tired of life” to take a suicide pill.
“I am not against it, as long as it can be carefully enough regulated so that it only concerns very old people who have had enough of living,” Els Borst-Eilers told the NRC Handelsblad newspaper.
The CNN television network in the United States reported that Borst said the subject was not a proper concern for the health minister, “but it could well be that a justice minister says: ‘I want to allow people to end it all.’” The Dutch Christian Democrat Party leader, Jaap de Hoop—who had fought unsuccessfully to stave off legal approval of physician-assisted suicide—reacted to Borst’s comments by saying, “It’s only a couple of days since the euthanasia law was voted in, and already the minister wants to go a step further.”