Stephen Hawking: Suicide if I Become a Burden, Can't Contribute

I have been warning that the high-profile normalization of assisted suicide -- and the media celebrating those who kill themselves in the face of disease -- is leading toward an ethic in which people kill themselves to avoid being a "burden," imagining what is, in essence, a moral duty to die.

Now the famed physicist Stephen Hawking has joined the parade, saying he would commit assisted suicide if he was no longer contributing or felt like a burden. From the story in the Telegraph:

When aske...