X-Message-Number: 10308
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 08:58:56 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10304 - #10306

Hi!

About suicide in the Netherlands.

First of all, this option is only open to citizens of the Netherlands.
Second, it requires the involvement of a physician in the Netherlands,
ie. able to practice there. Third, it remains officially illegal (the
laws against it are still in the books). However those laws are not
enforced.

So far as I know, there is no physician in the Netherlands sympathetic
to cryonicists, nor for that matter any citizen of the Netherlands who
is signed up with any cryonics organization. Alcor is the only such
organization which publishes the number of its members by country, and
their status as full members, associate members, or subscribers to
Alcor magazine and newsletter. There is no entry for the Netherlands at
all. Alcor is not the only cryonics society, at all, but it is the only
one about which I can make a definite statement.

There are, as you probably know, moves afoot to allow assisted suicides
in the Northern Territory of Australia and the US state of Oregon.
One cryonicist, Brandt-Erickson, publishes very good statements of the
status of these attempts worldwide on Cryonet.

Yes, this is disappointing. At some time it may change, but not yet.

Finally, allowing assisted suicide is NOT the same as allowing cryonic
suspension before "death" (whatever "death" is to mean here). When read
closely, the Oregon law does not seem to me to make suspension very
easy at all.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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