{"id":2319,"date":"2009-07-14T07:45:23","date_gmt":"2009-07-14T15:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=2319"},"modified":"2009-07-14T07:45:23","modified_gmt":"2009-07-14T15:45:23","slug":"blog-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/blog-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-1199550\/Famous-British-conductor-Sir-Edward-Downes-wife-die-assisted-suicide-clinic-Dignitas-switzerland.html\">This\u00a0is a touching story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of Britain&#8217;s greatest conductors and his wife have taken their own lives at the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas. \u00a0Sir Edward Downes, 85, and his 74-year-old wife Joan travelled there to end their lives, his family said in a statement. \u00a0Sir Edward, who was principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 1980 to 1991, had suffered with near blindness for the past 15 years and was\u00a0going deaf. Lady Downes had terminal cancer and &#8220;he could not go on living without her,&#8221; said Sir Edward&#8217;s agent Jonathan\u00a0Groves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am a strong Right-to-Death proponent\u00a0\u2014 as, according to the article, are an overwhelming majority of Britons:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is massive public support for a change in the law to allow assisted dying, with polls regularly showing more than 80 per cent of\u00a0the public want it made legal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have never been very clear about the religious objections to suicide and assisted suicide. \u00a0 The only time I tackled a religious colleague about\u00a0it he launched into a &#8220;slippery slope&#8221; argument. \u00a0 Well, I suppose some slopes are slippery, and some aren&#8217;t.  I can&#8217;t see this one as being\u00a0particularly slippery. \u00a0 In any case, slippery-slope is not a religious argument. \u00a0 What <em>is<\/em> the religious argument? \u00a0Are there any secular\u00a0ones, other than the slippery slope?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This\u00a0is a touching story. One of Britain&#8217;s greatest conductors and his wife have taken their own lives at the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Dignitas. \u00a0Sir Edward Downes, 85, and his 74-year-old wife Joan travelled there to end their lives, his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/blog-of-death\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}