{"id":11807,"date":"2011-04-18T10:58:16","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T17:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=11807"},"modified":"2011-04-18T10:58:45","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T17:58:45","slug":"stewart-on-right-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2011\/04\/stewart-on-right-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Stewart On Right To Die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/em>&#8216;s <strong>Sir Patrick Stewart<\/strong> made known his views on assisted suicide recently for a documentary to air on BBC Two.<\/p>\n<p>A patron of <em>Dignity in Dyin<\/em>g, an organization which is actively campaigning to have the law changed so that mentally competent, terminally ill adults may choose assisted suicide, Stewart&#8217;s views on the matter were formed after his own health issues and that of a family friend made him think about mortality.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/150Stewart.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-11808\" title=\"150Stewart\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/150Stewart.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"111\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>&#8220;A lot of it has to do with my age,&#8221; said Stewart. &#8220;I had a heart procedure five years ago. I was seventy last year and there is something about achieving threescore years and ten, isn&#8217;t there?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Illnesses in Stewart&#8217;s family and circle of friends also impacted how Stewart felt about assisted suicide. &#8220;&#8230;I had a family member who had been very ill and quite recently I&#8217;d heard the story of an illness and a death,&#8221; he said. His friend was &#8220;driven to an extreme situation of ending their life in the most ghastly way.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have the strong feeling that, should the time come for me, having had no role in my birth I would like there to be a choice I might make about how I die.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stewart is not the only high-profile person who supports <em>Dignity in Dying<\/em>. Author <strong>Sir Terry Pratchett <\/strong>will also appear in the BBC documentary. &#8220;I believe everybody possessed of a debilitating and incurable disease should be allowed to pick the hour of their death,&#8221; said Pratchett, who was diagnosed in 2008 with a form of Alzheimers.<\/p>\n<p>The documentary will be shown on BBC Two this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Star Trek: The Next Generation&#8216;s Sir Patrick Stewart made known his views on assisted suicide&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413,2442],"tags":[3600,2440],"class_list":["post-11807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew","category-star-trek-tng","tag-dignity-in-dying","tag-stewart"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/cast-crew\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Cast &amp; Crew<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/star-trek-tng\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Star Trek: TNG<\/a>","tag_info":"Star Trek: TNG","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11810,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11807\/revisions\/11810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}