 What, though, of Hitler’s Germany and the recent experience of legalized voluntary euthanasia in The Netherlands and elsewhere? The former is easily dismissed as an indication of an inevitable descent from voluntary euthanasia to non-voluntary. There never was a policy in favor of, or a legal practice of, voluntary euthanasia in Germany in the 1920s to the 1940s (see, for example, Burleigh 1994). There was, prior to Hitler coming to power, a clear practice of killing some disabled persons. But it was never suggested that their being killed was justified by reference to their best interests; rather, it was said that society would be benefited. Hitler’s later revival of the practice and its widening to take in other groups such as Jews and gypsies was part of a program of eugenics, not euthanasia.