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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10308