If they were unable to do so they would die within two minutes.

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Anti-euthanasia campaigners believe right-to-die legislation would endanger vulnerable people who are unable to protect themselves, and may choose suicide because they feel they are a burden to carers.

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Of course there are those with terrible conditions - locked-in syndrome, various forms of paralysis - who may wish to die, but be quite unable to do so without help, but for the vast majority of us suicide would be possible as a lone activity for some time after we knew that we were incontrovertibly dying.

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About 7, 000 Americans die each year because they are unable to get lifesaving organ transplants, primarily kidneys.

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For 15 years, as a hospital doctor in the rural town of Tugela Ferry, in the heart of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province, he had watched locals with extinguished immune systems die from infections like tuberculosis, unable to give them medicine that worked.

ECONOMIST: South Africa

During the next seven years, following more strokes, he was unable to speak and his behaviour became more bizarre but his eyes and gestures said he wanted to die.

ECONOMIST: Letters | The