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David Goodall: Scientist, 104, begins trip to end his life
On Wednesday, 104-year-old scientist David Goodall bid farewell to his home in Australia to fly across the world to end his life. The lauded ecologist and botanist is not suffering from a serious illness but wishes to bring forward his death. Key to his decision, he says, has been his diminishing independence.
"I greatly regret having reached that age," Dr Goodall said on his birthday last month, in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "I'm not happy. I want to die. It's not sad particularly. What is sad is if one is prevented."
Assisted dying was legalised by one Australian state last year following a divisive debate, but eligibility requires a person be terminally ill. It is illegal in other states. Dr Goodall says he will travel to a clinic in Switzerland to voluntarily end his life. However, he says he resents having to leave Australia to do so.
Also at USA Today, CNN, and The Local.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JNCF on Friday May 04 2018, @02:30PM (13 children)
Who isn't suffering?
Life is a terminal condition.
*takes pessimistic pedant hat off*
*has identity crisis*
*promptly puts pessimistic pedant hat back on*
(Score: 3, Funny) by Pino P on Friday May 04 2018, @02:41PM
Or slightly less pedantically, is there such a thing as "terminal mental illness"? I would imagine that most who are long-term serious about seeking assisted suicide would qualify.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday May 04 2018, @02:55PM (11 children)
*don't go return pedant* *don't go return pedant* *don't go return pedant*.
Damn, failed.
Give you props. "Intractable pain" is often the general standard and not just "suffering." Although in many cases that suffering must be defined for euthenasia to take place, which is why it differs from assisted suicide.
Take props away. Death does not exist solely because life does. There is a life cycle but until a condition intervenes which ends it (toxins, cell replication or repair failure, catastrophic trauma too extensive for repair process, exsanguination - a special case of that, failure of nutrition or other factors of cell respiration, or diseases which fit none of the above) the process is open ended. You will live until one of these conditions occurs. Put differently, the condition that will kill you is not necessarily present at birth. Though half a prop back that nobody is known to have managed to escape all these conditions indefinitely in corporeal form.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Friday May 04 2018, @03:50PM (3 children)
Yet one has a 100% chance of dying due to birth. Might be decades later, but it will happen!
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @04:44PM
There is no evidence to support that that claim. All you can say is that, as yet, there has not been an observation proving otherwise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday May 04 2018, @09:37PM
We just need good anti-aging treatments. This old man is only choosing death due to "diminishing independence". If he had the body of a twenty-something, he might choose to go on for centuries more.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @03:02PM
HUMAN males can give birth in Australia? OMG...
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 04 2018, @04:02PM (6 children)
Entropy is present at birth, and ever increasing! No technology (save maybe time crystals) can save you.
Proper pedantic riposte: "entropy is merely probabilistic!"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 04 2018, @04:44PM (1 child)
Can you get assisted suicide services in Australia by claiming Terminal Growing Entropy ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @10:51PM
Aahh, yes, never forget the good ol' TGE defence!
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday May 04 2018, @08:53PM (2 children)
At birth? Hardly. Otherwise a baby would never be able to grow. A human being is not a closed system, and anabolism does not have to be balanced by greater catabolism during development. Not to mention ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday May 05 2018, @04:37AM (1 child)
The universe appears to be a closed system, and it's been steadily increasing in entropy since well before you were born. Where are you planning to live, if not the universe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2018, @03:04PM
Don't know about you, but I am building a life boat to surf out of this universe info the next when it collapses during the next big bang
I might even live long enough to use it
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday May 05 2018, @02:54AM
What's the magic entropy reset at birth? How does a single cell grow into a young adult?
Entropy constraints are only relevent in a closed system, and the human body is anything but closed.
The human body is a biochemical machine that works for around a century due to continual and extensive self-repair. The amount of energy and entropy processed during that time dwarfs that required to completely rebuild a body.
The problem is that some of those repairs take short cuts, and leave accumulating errors and damage. e.g. Scar tissue instead of new tissue, unfixed RNA and DNA errors that are merely silenced instead of corrected, unwanted byproducts that don't have a removal mechanism.
The reason is simple, evolution takes a quick and dirty fix over a costly repair every time. It is cheaper and easier to have a cell divide, and have each daughter cell have only half as much rubbish in it, than to clean out the rubbish. Easier to slap some collagen glue over a cut than to correctly rebuild the damaged tissue.
There is no in-principle reason we cannot improve those repair processes to be sufficient for indefinite lifespan.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.