[WikiEN-l] "Suicide methods" article

[Bryan Derksen]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 4/19/07 9:10 AM, Info Control at infodmz at gmail.com wrote:
>> Who's basic humanity and cultural sensitivity? For some cultures and people,
>> suicide is acceptable. Do we impose a Christian viewpoint? Jew? Muslim?
>> Buddhist? Atheist? Humanist? American? Japanese? African?
> 
> And there is one common thread which binds all of your religious and ethnic
> examples: the human being. For this is what we all are before anything else
> is superimposed over us.

Actually, the atheist philosophy doesn't necessarily have anything to
say about that one way or another.

> Respecting and preserving that human life is also a common thread which
> connects us all.

For some people "respect for human life" also includes respecting
peoples' ability to decide how and when to end their own lives. As Info
Control pointed out in some cultures suicide is acceptable; as a
concrete example a quick Googling provided me with
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3640438.stm> which
indicates that 4 in 10 Scots would break the existing law to help loved
ones die.

But that's beside the point, really. Even if all of humanity rose up
tomorrow as one and announced "suicide is bad!" It would still be
perfectly reasonable to have an article that went "Even though all of
humanity agrees that suicide is bad,[1] the following is a factual
description of the common methods by which people have tried killing
themselves." It doesn't have to be advocacy or a how-to guide, we can
have a perfectly encyclopedic article on this subject.