Irish Piece Plays On Fear To Justify Assisted Suicide

Here's an Irish piece in the tank for assisted suicide and euthanasia pulling at all the same old, tired story lines: Misery, fear, etc., etc.

All lives are precious, but some are not worth enduring any more

If ever a story proves just what a weird and squalid little country this can be at times, it is surely this one. It was reported earlier in the week that a woman had been found dead in her apartment in Donnybrook.

So far, so sad; nobody wants to read about someone's death and, in most cases, it is a purely private tragedy -- a case of nothing to see here, move along.

But this case was different -- I'm not going to name the woman involved because it seems wrong and exploitative to use a person who dies in these circumstances to score some sort of point but the story goes like this: the woman was in excruciating agony in the end stages of motor neuron disease, a truly terrifying condition that incapacitates and humiliates you before it finally kills you.

The woman and a friend went to a travel agent in Dublin and booked two tickets to Switzerland -- but only one of them was a return. more