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Isn't Torture Illegal?
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Ten years ago, I watched my father suffer through a terminal illness that caused pain no amount of morphine could dull. By the last six months, he was praying that it would all just end. But there was no legal way to help him with that, and he suffered greatly. That's the situation Dr. Donald Low, the Canadian microbiologist who helped his country through the SARS crisis, was talking about when he recently made a video pleading for assisted suicide to be made legal. His motive? He had terminal cancer, a brain tumor, and he, too, was just waiting to die, recording the video eight days before he passed away. He wanted to die on his own terms -- surrounded by family, not in pain, just drinking the cocktail of drugs and going to sleep. But they made him wait it out, losing his sight, losing other senses, with difficulty breathing, no cure possible. How do you tell someone in that situation that, well, sorry, you have to suffer because we have a law that says you can't end your pain? (CBC)
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