JOHN FLEMING’S BOOK GETS REVIEWED BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM TIGHE

“Although the focus of the book, as regards the detailed description and analysis of “euthanasia battles”, is on Australia, as already mentioned, it ought to be disseminated and read as widely as possible, since its subject has become an issue of global importance and strife. Were Dr Fleming an American, a Canadian, a British subject (as he is, in addition to an Australian), a New Zealander, or a European from any Central and Western European state, he might have written the same book, but with a different set of activities, controversies, and legislative initiatives and struggles. The questions, arguments, and issues at stake would in most respects be almost identical, although the “state of play” would differ from place to place. That is what gives the wide thematic range of the book which I mentioned in the second paragraph of this foreword its salience and necessity. Only by linking together these themes can it be discerned that the strife over euthanasia is not the result of a spontaneous upwelling of a desire, whether well-founded or ill-informed, to alleviate suffering, but of a calculated attempt to overthrow the ethical and religious foundations on which “Western Civilisation” was built.” Professor William Tighe, Professor of History at Muhlenberg College, Allentown Pennsylvania, USA.

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