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In Nazi Ger­many, the exter­mi­na­tion pro­grams which resulted in the hor­rors of Auschwitz began with the “T-4″ euthana­sia pro­gram. The prece­dent that opened the door for state-authorized killing and that led to the euthana­sia pro­gram and the exter­mi­na­tion of the Jews and oth­ers was the Knauer case. In the Knauer case, Hitler autho­rized the ter­mi­na­tion of a seri­ously deformed infant at the request of its par­ents. This pro­gram exam­ines the issue of physician-assisted sui­cide and the right-to-die move­ment against the back­ground of the Nazi euthana­sia expe­ri­ence. (The Nazi euthana­sia pro­gram and the Nazi racial laws were an out­growth of the inter­na­tional eugen­ics move­ment and were strongly influ­enced by Amer­i­can eugen­ics think­ing and leg­is­la­tion.) In addi­tion to exam­in­ing the pend­ing legal deci­sions con­cern­ing physi­cian assisted sui­cide and the views of Dr. Tim­o­thy Quill (one of the lead­ing advo­cates of euthana­sia), the broad­cast high­lights the grad­u­a­tion of physi­cian assisted sui­cide into the ter­mi­na­tion of dis­abled peo­ple and the chron­i­cally ill and elderly. In par­tic­u­lar, the broad­cast dis­cusses the prece­dent estab­lished in the Nether­lands (which legal­ized physician-assisted sui­cide). In that coun­try, all the legal guide­lines which physi­cians were required to observe have become obso­lete through sys­tem­atic vio­la­tion. The Dutch pro­gram, which should inform the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence in this regard, has grav­i­tated down the “slip­pery slope” and has become omi­nously rem­i­nis­cent of the Third Reich’s T-4 pro­gram. (Recorded in March of 1997.)