Marcel Tremblay, 78, a right-to-die advocate, announced this week that he would celebrate his own wake at a local restaurant Friday night before going home to suffocate himself with a helium-filled bag in the company of family and friends.

Experts in ethical issues are divided on whether Tremblay's stand will further the public debate on euthanasia. But two agreed on one thing: "There's a certain kind of ghoulishness to this," said Margaret Somerville.

The director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law in Montreal argues that the media wind up as active participants in periodic right-to-die causes celebres.

Taking one's life as a political gesture, adds Arthur Schafer of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, is "culturally jarring" in Canada and should be cause for a "queasy feeling" among media covering the story.

But Schafer argues Tremblay's act is worthy of public debate, even if it ultimately doesn't reflect well on his cause.

Somerville characterizes such public acts as misdirected quests for a legacy.

"In the vast majority of cases, you hear the people say, 'Well, at least my death had some purpose. It helped promote the cause I believe in'," said Somerville, who has researched death and dying for a quarter century.

"Part of this requires the media to take a lot of notice - so it's a real problem. It really does expressly involve you (the media)."

While Tremblay has the legal right to kill himself, she said, "it's not within the power of the right-to-die movement to do anything that means they're encouraging, assisting or soliciting that."