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Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide
cHALiTO writes "Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed. As part of this, he has visited Switzerland's Dignitas clinic, an assisted suicide facility, with a BBC camera crew, as part of a documentary that will include Britain's first televised suicide. Pratchett took home Dignitas's assisted suicide consent forms."
The moral problem is not that Terry Pratchett wants to kill himself. That is between him and God. Assuming that he has finalized his estate, he's welcome to off himself and suffer any consequences that might avail him in the life hereafter.
However, Terry Pratchett is a coward. He doesn't want to commit suicide. He wants someone else to kill him when it gets so bad he can't do it himself. That is the slippery slope that we want to avoid; having other people decide when you are no longer fit to live.
Be a man about it Terry. Take a knife and stab yourself. Get drunk and go swimming in a deep, cold lake. Overdose on pills. Get a shotgun; go in style (to quote Hania Lee). Just don't ask someone else to commit excused murder because you don't have the guts to bother to do the deed yourself.