In a interview on the weekend, British novelist Martin Amis proposed that “euthanasia booths” be placed on “every corner” where the elderly and the demented can go out quietly, with dignity, receiving a “martini and a medal”.

England would soon face a “civil war” in Britain between the younger and older generations in 10 or 15 years' time, he believes. “They'll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops," he told the Guardian. His solution? "There should be a booth on every corner where you could get a martini and a medal.”

Critics have labelled Amis’ comments ‘glib’ and ‘offensive’.

Alistair Thompson, of the Care Not Killing Alliance, described Amis’ comments as “very worrying”. "How on earth can we pretend to be a civilised society if people are giving the oxygen of publicity to such proposals?"

Fellow novelist Joan Brady told the Guardian on Monday that she viewed Amis’ comments as ‘flippancy’ and ‘prostitution’, questioning Amis’ ‘trivialising’ of “a subject of enormous magnitude just to flog a book”. Her husband was killed by a degenerative disease.

Amis contends that his comments were more ‘satirical’ than ‘glib’. He also told the Guardian, “What we need to recognise is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction." ~ Guardian Jan 24, Jan 25