#Life is a terminal illness quote free#

Only 5% of those diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease survive for more than a decade. Hawking has been held up as the supreme example of a human being who has triumphed over a failing body to achieve scientific and literary success. 'There must be safeguards that the person concerned genuinely wants to end their life and they are not being pressurised into it or have it done without their knowledge or consent as would have been the case with me,' he told the interviewer.

His first wife, Jane Hawking, was given the option to turn it off. In 1985, when he became very ill with pneumonia, he was at one stage placed on a life support machine. He is concerned, however, that there must be safeguards to ensure that nobody's life is terminated against their wish. 'We don't let animals suffer, so why humans?'

#Life is a terminal illness quote free#

'I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives and those that help them should be free from prosecution,' he said. While there's life, there is hope.'īut in an interview with the BBC, Hawking, a cosmologist and theoretical physicist, offered his unqualified support to those who feel their life is no longer tolerable. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. He said in 2006 that, although people should have the right to end their life if they wanted to, 'I think it would be a great mistake.