STEPHEN  HAWKING’S  SUICIDE  ATTEMPT   -   BOSCONET  THOUGHTS

In 1963 doctors diagnosed Stephen Hawking as suffering from Motor Neurone Disease. He had only months to live. About 5% of its victims do survive over a decade. Hanwking is alive even today.

In 1985 Hawking had pneumonia. He had a tracheotomy and a tube was inserted through his throat into his windpipe. He could not speak any more. “I admit that when I had my tracheotomy operation, I briefly tried to commit suicide by not breathing. However, the reflex to breathe was too strong,” he said in an interview to BBC the day before yesterday. At present he cannot even breathe on his own. He is permanently on a ventilator, but he has no desire to end his life on his own.

Stephen Hawking is a theoretical physicist on a par with Albert Einstein. The 72-year-old is a professor at Cambridge. His contribution to our understanding of the universe is immense (I hope you have read his book – A Brief History of Time).

The discussion on euthanasia or “mercy killing” is a very complex one. Do we let God – or nature – decide how long people live or does the person in question or the people around her decide when she can no longer have a productive or ‘happy’ life? To what extant should we use medical science to prolong a life that seems to have become merely vegetative?