A ubiquitous children's book author suffering from dementia and Parkinson's disease has announced that he will die by physician-assisted suicide.
Robert Munsch, who has published 85 books including the classic The Paper Bag Princess, applied for and was granted Medical Assistance in Dying from the Canadian government shortly after he was diagnosed with dementia in 2021, The New York Times reports.
Patients do not have to be terminally ill to be euthanized under the Canadian law, which was passed in 2016, and Munsch joked in his interview with the Times that the application consisted of: 'Hello Doc- come kill me!' and 'How much time do I have? Fifteen seconds!'
The 80-year-old said he was convinced he made the right decision after watching one of his brothers die of Lou Gehrig's disease.
'They kept him live through all these interventions,' he recounted. 'I thought: Let him die.'
