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If he did want to die and we forced him to live, do you think he would have done the work he did? I don't.
tony nicklinson - 'locked-in syndrome'
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If he did want to die and we forced him to live, do you think he would have done the work he did? I don't.
Who is forcing anyone to do anything?
Maybe a meeting with Mr hawking could do some good?
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Man of Honour
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I think I misread your post, but to answer your question, society is forcing disabled people who want to die to live an often painful life.
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I'm not sure how. As far as I know, Prof Hawking isn't in as much pain as many other people are.
Are you aware of the topic of this thread? Some poor guy is being forced to live in a broken body.
And what is he gonna say? "Don't kill yourself mate, go back in time (btw I proved thats impossible), educate yourself to genius level and live like me!"
Where are you getting this from? The chances of people recovering fully from depression is actually VERY low. Depression is almost like a form of brain conditioning: like all human behaviours, we are susceptible to habit and custom. A depressed person will either have to be on mood/life-altering drugs their whole life, or will likely have to contend with knowing it will come back again and again throughout their life. Depression comes and goes in cycles; once a person has been seriously depressed once, the chances are very high that they will slip into that way of thinking again whenever they encounter some difficulty, stress or anxiety in their real life (and invariably modern life is a very difficult and stressful experience). From my experience of talking to doctors it is clear that the chances of 'curing' depression in a person are vaguely hopeful at best. This is why depression is considered one of the biggest and most harmful 'disabilities' (and it is one, in every sense of the word) in the Western world: it is just like having a life-long physical disability. The methods of treating depression at the moment are either trialling dozens of anti-depressant pills with mixed chances of success (i.e. medicate the problem in the same way you'd take Ibuprofen for a toothache; the tooth is still in your mouth) or various forms of therapy (e.g. CBT) that help you to 'manage' depression. Not to get rid of - to manage, i.e. to still have a functional life and go to work and socialise with depression. There is no 'cure' that you speak of.
I've lost two friends to suicide in the last 3 years (I'm 22). I have no problem with their deaths if they were seriously depressed and did not want to go on with life - who am I to say "no, sorry, your suffering wasn't enough for me to be satisfied". It's their life. I'm actually in support of safe suicide clinics - even for people not needing assistance because of physical disability. My last friend to go jumped in front of a train and that is the most/only horrifying thing about it to me - the public nature of it, and the brutality of it. If she had a safe environment to go peacefully in, I would honestly be fine with that, underneath all of the obvious upset and sense of loss. It's their life, ffs. In fact, at places like Dignitas they offer a friendly and humanist environment that would, if anything, help prevent many suicides. Do you know most people that go into these death clinics change their mind? The clinics offer a humane, understanding environment for the person to seriously think over ending their life. If my friend had been able to go to one of these and be given a serious talk by a doctor/carer, and given a few days in that environment to think about it, she maybe - who knows - wouldn't have done it. Jumping in front of a fast-moving train on a lonely platform is a sudden and rash decision; a suicide clinic is deliberated and thought-out. I am fully in support of them.
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The public would vote for the death penalty... parliament would not.
Thank god. Democracy is flawed because most of the public are morons. The fact they read The Sun or Daily Mail is evidence of that.
The public would vote for the death penalty... parliament would not
The overwhelming majority of the public are against the death-penalty, and would not go out of their homes to vote for it to be brought back. It's just a popular cry for tabloid-readers whenever the latest scandal/abuse case comes up - "bring the death penalty back!". However these cases of outrage don't really change public opinion in a definite and lasting way.
Yes and I read the BBC
Why would Mr Hawking say something silly like that?
Maybe he needs better people around him to show him there is an alternativeway of living with his condition.
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You certainly have more faith in the public than I do. I'm not sure if that's blind naivety or not though.
It happened with Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. The Moors murders were committed soon after the death penalty was abolished, and - lo! and behold! - the tabloid-reading public started protesting and asking for it to be put back in place. The UK government didn't listen and decided to ignore the requests. Ian Brady himself has repeatedly been asked to be killed... request denied.
Who was still even asking 12 months after the case for the death penalty to be reinstated? Nobody. It's a kneejerk reaction. Nobody really wants the state executing people regularly and routinely.
It's not my perception, based on newspaper stories/comments following whichever terrible event... it's what polls have said (real polls, not ones on forums
I'm sorry but if you're using a snap-poll - one taken straight after the event when the paper and audience have been whipping each other into a frenzy of indignation - as some sort of evidence that people really actually rationally want the death penalty back...
Please stop reading The Sun. It's not good for your brain. Tabloids are a load of ********, to be frank.
Using Prof Hawking as an example is ****-poor, to be honest. Prof. Hawking is an intellectual - his most important organ is his brain. Even if he had a working body he'd probably be in a library hunched over a desk for 8 hours a day, thinking and studying. You don't need an able body to be an astrophysicist. This guy in the OP clearly is not a man in the same position: his life consists of watching TV all day. His greatest pleasure is "the rugby". He sits watching rugby knowing he can never even throw a ball again in his life. To compare them is pretty weak.
@spudbynight - I hope nothing like this or any other equally debilitating disease stikes you down. IMO It would put your statement to test. That is unless you'd be quite happy living each day of your life only being able to stare at some letters to have any form of understandable communication with your family or public, or placing the huge mental and physiological strain on your family members!!!. But id assume your theory of "nobody has the right to death" would change rather quickly.
Really?
In 2010 they found 51% supported the death penalty for murder, 37% opposed.
In the MORI poll in July 2010 62% supported it for child murder (and 70% supported in at least some circumstances).
"in November 2010 found 74% of people supported the death penalty for murder in some circumstances,
though only 16% supported it for all murders"
Taken from UK Polling report. Anyway back on topic
As with mostly all polls and votes of this nature, the silent majority don't bother to say anything about it... because their default stance is 'no'. Who answers these polls? I've certainly never taken a poll to state my disagreement with the death penalty. Nor have I been approached in the street for a chance to voice my opinion. I couldn't tell you anyone I know that would support the death penalty.
A bad life where many people are suffering is better than happiness and acceptance for all around him?
I don't agree with you.
I must be less kind than you, I hope he does get the kind of thing that makes him want to kill himself, people with his kind of backwards thinking need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern more educated world for the good of everyone on the planet.