Abstract
Asking whether mercy killing is a blessing and an answer to terminal illness and intractable pain, or a beginning to a new holocaust, William F. Buckley, Jr. narrates the film. It includes short presentations by persons opposed to active euthanasia: Dame Cicely Saunders (founder of England's hospice movement) explaining hospice; William Brennan, a holocaust scholar; several Dutch physicians who oppose euthanasia; Craig Vick, a handicapped Presbyterian minister; Jay E. Adams, a theologian; Matthew Conoly, a physician expert in pain control; a malpractice lawyer; an assistant district attorney; Fr. Tom O'Connor, a hospice chaplain; Allan Jay, a physician who refused to remove feeing tubes from his patient Anna Hirth and was taken to court; and several others. In addition, persons who favor active euthanasia provide their views, including: Derek Humphry, author of Final Exit and founder and former head of the Hemlock Society; Robert Risley, lawyer and author of legislation proposing that physicians actively assist competent patients who request death, the California Humae Death Act; and Pieter Admiraal and Herbert Cohen, two Dutch physicians who perform euthanasia.
