Years later, I still feel some sort of anger mixed up with sadness when I remember him. There is a similarity between the casual disregard for life that Collin felt and the perspective of campaigners for voluntary euthanasia. Even if the wishes of families and friends are taken into account when the question of voluntary euthanasia arises, the question of the relation of the individual to broader society emerges. We are all made by our languages, our literature, our cultures, our science, our religions, our civilisation. We owe a debt to the world and to the global community.
Human life extends beyond the contours of the body.
The most corrosive effects of liberalising current law would not be a surge in demand for euthanasia, but the implications for wider society. If it is the individual, all suicides, including those like Collin's, must be allowed and perhaps even assisted. Some terminally ill patients live active and productive lives during their last days, others with the same condition do not. To relativise life, as if it were no better than being dead, is dangerous as well as stupid. If we do not regard all human life as worth preserving, we will be forced to question laws that regard taking a life as murder, whether that life be an elderly, terminally ill hospital patient or a young person with many years ahead.