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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."
Its the UK, a different culture. There they believe its the governments right to totally control how you live...
With respect, that's horse-shit.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
http://catholicexchange.com/2011/06/14/154594/
For those that don't want to read it, this is the argument:
"If we adopt a law holding that a person has the right to kill himself, soon we will also adopt euthanasia; because if the individual has the right to say when his life is no longer worth living, soon society will claim this right as well."
The rest just bashes the media, liberalism, and socialism.
Suicide is mans attempt to keep control of what he never had any control of. Himself.
I'm not sure I see any factual statement in that. Wanting to die with dignity and sparing the lives of others around him is not related to lacking control throughout life.
Legal suicide is an invitation for the 'state' to decide who is worthy to live and die because it immediately puts law makers in the position of deciding who's life is worthy of being required to live.
Many states already do that with the death penalty, but yet we are still not allowed to chose to legally commit suicide. In fact, it's illegal in many states to even attempt to commit suicide and you can be charged criminally if you attempt (and fail) to do so. Allowing someone to voluntarily commit assisted suicide does not put the government in control of that person's life, it puts the individual in charge.
As has always happened in the past legal suicide will not be fully voluntary for long , because it will be used as an excuse to not take care of those people who choose not to use the 'option' when they are no longer 'worthy' of support.
Again, we're talking about voluntary assisted suicide, which means that the individual chooses, not the government or care-taker. While it's entirely possible that the Power of Attorney could invoke assisted suicide on another individual, there could be laws placed against that if assisted suicide were to be made legal.
Point being, if someone wants to die, it should be their choice. My father's life-long best friend committed suicide in his back yard the day after getting a terminal cancer diagnosis; while in his case it was a little selfish, he spared his family many years of grueling stress and granted them a positive feeling that he is in a better place now.
The government does NOT have the right to kill you. The death penalty is illegal within the European Union and considered a human rights violation.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
PTerry already does a huge amount for Alzheimers projects. He doesn't expect the fix to come in before it's too late for him, and so he's making his plans and raising a stink about the issues while he still can.
As for "he should look at these examples," he's already keeping abreast of everything that's going on in this field. In fact, right at the beginning of all this, he asked all the n-thousand people who would write to him going "have you tried X, Y or Z" option to please not do so, unless they were a neurosurgeon or brain expert, to keep the clutter down and the signal-to-noise ratio up.
Amusingly, a disproportionate number of top-flight experts in these areas are fans. He effectively has a whole bunch of experts who keep him aware of the state of play.
Put simply, he's doing everything he can in his position, including laying the ground work in the event it's not quick enough.
"How fine you look when dressed in rage."
The charter of Human Rights states that the right to life is inalienable. The UK, like any EU member state, is bound to it. Adding exceptions to a basic human right is extremely dangerous.
"inalienable[in-eyl-yuh-nuh-buhl, -ey-lee-uh-]
–adjective
not alienable; not transferable to another or capable of being repudiated: inalienable rights."
In other words the right to life rest solely in the hands of the individual, which would extend to the right to end that life. No other can decide on that right. I'm lucky enough to life in a state with euthanasia laws, hopefully I won't ever have to use them but I'm glad to have the option.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.