From: John Kelsey

At 02:07 PM 12/11/03 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote:

...

It's worth noting that despite over a decade of this rhetoric, not a single terminally ill American has done this, so far as I am aware.

Well, I think for most terminal illnesses, by the time it's obvious you're really not going to live much longer, you're pretty damned sick.

About half of my friends who died of a terminal illness were apparently quite healthy when told they had joined the "nearly departed".

And until then, you'd probably like to make some personal use of what days or weeks you have left doing something like talking to your kids, praying, composing that last piece of music, etc., rather than blowing random strangers up to make some political point.

Isn't it depressing than some have been living their lives in a way that such an 11th hour changes of heart are necessary or desired? (Wouldn't it be a hell of a depressing

statement about yourself, if you really believed that the most valuable use of the last hours of your life of which you were capable would involve strapping some dynamite to yourself and taking out a busload of random strangers?)

Who mentioned random? Who mentioned dynamite? What I'm suggesting is no more random than soldiers killing other soldiers in war. "The purpose is to get the other poor dumb bastard to die for their ideology." Besides, there is no need for these operations to be a suicide. The lack of fear gives one a decided edge in dangerous situations which may actually increase survival rates.

Along with that, most people care about either the afterlife form of immortality, or at least the reputation/legacy form of immortality. Even if you don't worry about lakes of fire and red guys with pitchforks, you might prefer not to have your family and friends humiliated and ashamed at the mention of your name. ("Oh my God! That was *your* son? How do you live with that?")

That's their problem. From my prespective its like Hollywood: as long as you still being talked about you're 'alive'. It doen't matter what they are saying. Better to be infamous down through history than unknown. ND