Stephen Hawking is speaking out on a hot button topic: assisted suicide.

The physicist and cosmologist told the BBC that he would consider ending his own life if he was a burden to others or if he had nothing more to contribute, The Guardian reported.

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But he said he still has more work to do despite amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, and is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Hawking told the BBC "To keep someone alive against their wishes is the ultimate indignity.  I would consider assisted suicide only if I were in great pain or felt I had nothing more to contribute but was just a burden to those around me," The Guardian reported.

At the age of 21, Hawking was told he would have only two years to live and has been in a wheelchair since the late 1960s.

Read The Guardian's full article here.

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The renovation of Jekyll Island's Great Dunes golf course includes nine holes designed by Walter Travis in the 1920s for the members of the Jekyll Island Club. Several holes that were part of the original layout where located along the beach and were bulldozed in the 1950s.(Photo by Austin Kaseman)

Credit: Photo by Austin Kaseman