h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know the difference as the law stands. I was just talking in terms of ideals, what I think is right rather than what I know is legal.

I see no ethical difference between letting someone die and killing them yourself. Either way your choice determined whether the person lives or dies, the fact that which state the null decision leds to means nothing.

Perhaps it is the easy way out, but don't people have a right to choose the easy way if they wish.

Many a failed suicide is a cliched 'cry for help' done in such a way there is far lesser risk of actual death, or that death would take such a long time discovery and live-saving intervention is likely (these things can never be guaranteed) and generally are thankful, eventually, for being saved.

Someone who really means it, generally does mean it - as I understand it in the UK train-drivers are taught to expect one 'jumper' in their careers. More often than not these people have thought about it long and hard, trying to come up with ways that are fairly quick and relatively painless.

I know how I'd do it.

The most convincing case of suicide I've ever heard of happened in a hotel where I used to w*rk - a woman who used pills and whisky (which is probably the way I'd use to if I ever wanted to commit suicide).

She had prepared everything - she had left all her insurance papers and stuff on the desk and even the receipt for her pre-paid funeral. To go that far she must have been really determined and knowing full well that she wanted to die.

I don't know why she chose to do it in a hotel - maybe to spare friends or relatives the shock of finding her dead or, if she was alone, making sure somebody found her before her body started decomposing.

I wonder what stage life has to get to before people do that...

I mean I have thought about it a lot, but its always been a 'what if'. The method people would use seems to come up too often when peeps in this house get talking - only 1/4 hasn't thought about it.

I've heard the mess from the train method is incredibly difficult to clear, not something that normally occurs.

Now I'm in a morbid mood, and this is the last thing I had to reply an all. Ach well.

I know coppers/undertakers who've had to clear up after train suicides, quite a harrowing for the clean-up crew...and the people's gardens you find the bits in.

I have a friend who used to be a guard on the Underground. About six months in he had to help when someone threw themselves under a tube train - he and a handful of others had to follow the train as they backed it up over the body... or what was left of it. Not pleasant.

I think I'm beginning to understand more of what prompted me to begin this thread. It seems to me that people these days are demanding ever more 'rights'. The right to die, the right to compensation for something that happened to one's ancestors 200 years ago, the right to sue someone up the wazoo. It's diminishing and demeaning the concept of what a 'right' is, and in attaining these rights, people are not being taught the responsibilities that come with them and the judgement they should use when exercising them. Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean that should do it wherever and whenever, and if if you get your head busted for doing it when you shouldn't have (like for instance, saying something which offended someone so much that they were roused to anger), you really shouldn't blame the other person.

"Everything is permissible"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible"--but not everything is constructive.

That's an old quote, but in this day when more and more is lawfully allowed, more true than ever.

That's the trouble with having a 'Bill of Rights' - if the only things we're allowerd to do are what's written on that list...any list is shorter than the list of things that aren't on that list...you figure it out

Hi. I don't have anything to add to the issue, but I've enjoyed reading the conversation so far.

*whispers*

I'm lurking too. Nice to know I'm not alone.

I thought I felt you looking over my shoulder, Vip