There’s a debate on assisted suicide up on Metafilter, brought about by an article by writer Terry Pratchett. I’ve posted on suicide before, but this is more about terminally ill and suffering people and the battle for the right to decide when to go that some of them are waging. My mom brought up the subject in connection to her own mother being very ill and suffering the worst of old age right now. I don’t know how I would handle the request if someone would ask me.
Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and is writing the article from the perspective of someone who will be horribly sick before dying. It’s well worth ten minutes of your time. Memento mori, and so on.
As an author, I’ve always tended to be known only to a circle of people – quite a large one, I must admit – who read books. I was not prepared for what happened after I ‘came out’ about having Alzheimer’s in December 2007, and appeared on television. People would stop me in the street to tell me their mother had it, or their father had it. Sometimes, it’s both parents, and I look into their eyes and I see a flash of fear. In London the other day, a beefy man grabbed my arm, smiled at me and said, ‘Thanks a lot for what you’re doing, my mum died from it,’ and disappeared into the crowd.
→ Daily Mail, Terry Pratchett: I’ll die before the endgame [Via: Metafilter]