X-Message-Number: 20580
From: 
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 13:50:20 EST
Subject: Lifesaving Euthenasia

Hello all:

A while ago I asked about cooling the brain as death approached, and was 
helpfully told that U.S. law would never allow such a thing even if it were 
practical.   Thanks.

Now I'd like to ask about arranging death to occur at a precise time, and 
hopefully before the whole system is too badly damaged, and whether laws 
anywhere might be more flexible than here.  

I read How We Die, and found that 70% of us die in a hospital, often a slow 
and lingering death that is quite ugly and markedly unpleasant during the 
last week or so.  Often the kidneys fail first and the brain dies in uremic 
poisoning, and remains dead and deteriorating a long time before the heart 
stops.  Not promising for repair in the future.  

In such a position I'd prefer to be given oxygen to keep me "healthy", until 
things had deteriorated to the point that I would die if it were withdrawn.  
Then have it withdrawn with doctor and rescuers standing by.  My heart would 
stop, the doctor would certify death, and suspension would begin immediately. 
 This might be better assured if I were 12,000 ft. and in a hyperbaric 
chamber with 1.5 atmospheres.  I'd ask them to take me out "So I can see the 
sunset", and the change from 1.5 atmospheres pure oxygen to 0.6 atmospheres 
of 20% should do it.  Perhaps a shot of morphine "for the pain" but also to 
slow respiration would help, and doctors and biologists might know other 
tricks that were legal.  I'd thus avoid a week of increasing misery and about 
double my chances of successful resuscitation.  

These tactics might even be legal in the U.S.-- anyone can demanded the 
removal of life support whenever he wants.  But surely in Mexico, with 
relaxed laws that allow all the laetrile type treatments forbidden here, and 
probably with laxer enforcement of what laws there are.  And there are 
probably other places where you could more less get away with anything.  

Best of all might be Holland which already allows euthanasia -- if we 
campaigned for it, might they not allow this? Indeed, for the terminally ill, 
might they not allow it now? 

Thus the ideal situation would be a freezing facility in Holland with a 
hospice attached. You go there as your time approaches.  When experts think 
it best they obtain your permission, stop your heart, and immediately freeze 
you.  Perhaps they could even cool your whole body to far hypothermia before 
stopping your heart. 

If the Dutch allow euthanasia to end suffering by ending life, why not allow 
it to save life, or at least to give you your best shot at it? 


Has anyone researched what the optimal point would be for death to occur 
(during the dying process obviously), what is the best way (with 
precooling?), how it could legally and morally be brought about, and what 
countries might allow it? Overall, what you think? Would optimal termination 
increases chances of resuscitation? 

Alan Mole 

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