Neglected Soundbite of Last Week: Hawking on Euthanasia

Stephen Hawking's speech set people all atitter about space colonizations. It sent Catholics into a quote-hunt, seeing if he had misrepresented John Paul II at an old papal academy of science meeting. So courtesy of Spiked On-line, here's some good cheer left out of the media spotlight:

Hawking made other remarks in Hong Kong that received less coverage than his space comments, perhaps because they go against today's consensus. On euthanasia he said: "I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope." On research priorities he argued that "fundamental science has to be directed by scientific considerations, not economic ones". Out of hundreds of press reports on Hawking's talk, these statements only seem to have appeared in the Chinese People's Daily (3). Everyone else seemed to think the big story was "The End is Nigh (Again)".