6. Freedom

He started telling people that “life is a gift. And gifts can be thrown away. If it can’t be thrown away, it’s not a gift but a burden.”

“You’re only going to die once,” Philip liked to say. “Why settle for anything but the best?”

Hope in the face of illness or injury was OK, but hope could also be its own kind of tyranny if it prevented you from preparing for the worst.

Philip, in turn, said he hated the idea of doctors picking and choosing which patient to help, if any at all, according to their own personal criteria. Why should doctors be in charge of deciding who among them was sick enough, or sympathetic enough, or desperate enough? Or whose family was respectable and trustworthy enough?

“Are we opening floodgates for mass suicide, or are we setting a new agenda for aging? Will there be an avalanche of suicides, or will there be a wave of comfort that spreads rapidly through the swelling ranks of the elderly? Will society be better or worse off?
The idea is: having a peaceful death is a human right. And as a right, it’s not something that you have to ask permission for. In other words, it’s something you have simply because you’re a person of this planet.

He began. “The right of a rational adult to a peaceful death, at the time of one’s choosing, is fundamental.” As such, he explained, it could not be taken away. And it was not dependent on how sick a person was. In fact, because it was a human right, it had no eligibility criteria at all. Philip smiled. “Eligible to die? Now, that’s a quaint notion.”

Philip Nitschke, MD, PhD.

作为医生，更多探讨了euthanasia的伦理和医生的职责。