The Thanatos Syndrome

The Thanatos Syndrome

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The Pequod Review:

The Thanatos Syndrome is Walker Percy's sequel to Love in the Ruins (1971), The book is an odd mix of science fiction, mystery thriller, sociology, satire, and religion (specifically Catholicism):

You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind —and to do so without a single murmur from one of you. Not a single letter of protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you’re going to end up doing? You a graduate of Harvard and a reader of the New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation’s Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you? . . . You’re going to end up killing Jews.