Like the English Patient , you want a little help to end your suffering. As always, we take you along both sides of a seemingly unbridgeable divide - and bring you out alive. There have been times and places in history when taking your own life was considered honorable, but the practice of suicide has been generally opposed in America. Many insist that the desire to commit suicide is an indication of mental illness. Others believe that to take your own life is a violation of God's law.
Suicide is wrong.
But there have been dissenting voices who say that there are times when the prolongation of your own life is absurd and unethical, and that the individual, sovereign over his own body, ought to be allowed to make the determination for himself. Hemingway, for example, sincerely considered that splattering his brains all over the house was the brave and moral thing for him to do, even though his wife had to clean up the mess. Suicide is not illegal in the United States. Or maybe you're not exactly certain as to the correct dosage of Drano. Surely a considerate doctor, a man or woman of the world, would be willing to help you find a more humane solution.