That's why he went to Switzerland, to check it out and get the release forms to have it done. Basically he wants to take care of the legal part of it while he's still cognizant. His campaigning I think has less to do with himself and more with giving other people the right to off themselves. He's being benevolent. Ah well, I wish him luck. Though hopefully there's some radical breakthrough that'll make it unnecessary.

Well, there's always the option of throwing yourself off a bridge while you still can. They can't really stop you from killing yourself if you want to. But that of course cuts off a lot of time you might potentially still have to enjoy life and your family and friends.

Yea, and the option of a relatively clean death. Jumping off of crap can be messy and nonfatal an awful lot. Even shooting yourself tends to at least be very messy, and sometimes still not fatal. Nothing like shooting yourself in the head only to survive, blinded and quadriplegic.

I was literally about to post about this. Being a huge fan of his, and knowing he's also pretty damn smart when it comes to practical things, I watched his speech at the Christmas lectures on this subject and this documentary was shown on BBC on Monday, but I only just got around to watching it a few minutes ago.

Suicide is completely illegal over here, assisted or not, but in most of (all?) mainland Europe it's legal. Apparently Dignitas in Switzerland is the only place anyone can go however to die in a foreign country. Pratchett still isn't sure if he wants to go ahead with it or not but he, like me, believes in peoples choices, hence he went to watch. They followed a couple where the husband had motor neuron disease that were similar to Pratchett and his wife (been together for 40 years, similar age, well to do etc etc, in other words a pretty much perfect life aside from the illness).

On the documentary you actually watch him die. It was the hardest thing I have ever seen. So many questions, confirmations that he wants to do it, then two drinks and he drops into a sleep after maybe 10 minutes, and within another 5 he was gone. The worst was watching the people left behind, and Terry's assistant Rob; he was in the documentary very little but when he was there you could see he basically doesn't want Terry to choose this.

It's also different for Terry. The dignitas doctor basically said she wouldn't allow him to die after his mind was going even if he'd signed consent forms whilst still sound of mind, because she'd have to inject him and that is killing, not suicide. So Terry would have to end it early, maybe much earlier than necessary.

It's a fascinating subject and one I do agree with having the choice in but I don't know if I could go through with that, or watch someone. Terry broke down watching Peter and he'd only met him 3 or 4 times briefly. It was not a quiet death; better than most, yes, but still not pleasant.

Yea, I'm with you there. I support peoples' right to choose, but I'm not sure I could do it myself, or do it for someone else. Death freaks me out.

I agree. I'm sure my (your?) perspective might change once faced with an incurable disease or endless suffering. Who's to say? It's like...I was watching a doctor show recently and it had a perfectly healthy-looking young woman who, apparently, had been diagnosed with a pretty much terminal cancer. Like in a year or two. Times like those you realize that at our age, we don't even consider death (or not realistically, anyway). The idea of knowing I'd be a goner in a year or two when there seems to be nothing much wrong now is absolutely insane. But not impossible.

Yea, I agree. Freaky stuff. Hopefully that whole death problem is solved before it becomes terminal...

Yeah man. They need to hurry the fuck up with th Singularity. I don't want to be an old ass immortal. But then, I'll just transplant my brain into a younger, better body. I hope.

Weirdly enough one of the first things I thought after watching this was that it was an argument against the whole "violence in video games desensitizes people"; I could kill 1000s on CoD but that still upset me so in your face anti-games people!

Haha, yeah, I do the most degraded stuff in video games and I think I have a fairly healthy moral composure irl. The two are definitely not mutually inclusive.