Stephen Hawking: Motor Neurone Disease Taught Me Not to Pity Myself

Stephen Hawking, one of the most respected scientists humankind has ever had, is an inspiration to all those suffering from the deadly condition called motor neurone disease. Hawking, now 69, reveals that he is 'happier' with motor neurone disease than before he was diagnosed.

The cosmologist said he has never allowed himself to be consumed by self-pity. He refuses to give up and urges others diagnosed with a serious illness to "not be disabled in spirit as well as physically."

"I'm happier now than before I developed the condition," the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

"It taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do," he added.

Unable to speak naturally, his synthesised voice produces sentences that he laboriously constructs, choosing words on an electronic screen by twitching his cheek.

Hawking has proved the medical science wrong which claims that people afflicted by the disease usually do not survive for more than 10 years. He got the disease at the age of 21 when he was a Cambridge scientist.

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The man, who transformed the way many of us regard the universe with his best-selling books including 'A Brief History Of Time', received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama in 2009.

Source-ANI