Hawking backs assisted dying

Professor Stephen Hawking admitted that he “briefly tried to commit suicide” in the 1980s when his worsening neurological disease left him unable to breath or speak without assistance.
The Cambridge professor was discussing his own experiences of being diagnosed with a terminal illness in an interview with the BBC about assisted dying.
Hawking, now aged 72 and largely regarded as one of the most influential theoretical physicist since Einstein, defied medical experts who predicted he had just months to live in 1963 after he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.
Asked by the BBC whether he thought there was a danger, based on his own experience, that the assisted dying bill might lead to people choosing death who may have gone on to lead a long and productive life, he said: “That is a decision the individual has to make, it is wrong for the law to take away that option.”
“I admit that when I had my tracheostomy operation, I briefly tried to commit suicide by not breathing. However, the reflex to breathe was too strong.”
“We don't let animals suffer, so why should your pain be prolonged against your wishes?” he said in the interview.
He went on to claim that “it is discrimination against disabled people to deny them to right to kill themselves that able bodied people have”, but added that he thought it would be “wrong to despair and commit suicide unless one is in great pain”.
“I believe one should have control of one's life, including its ending,” he concluded. “Personally, I think suicide would be a grave mistake. I would consider it only if I was in great pain with no prospect of relief.”