X-Message-Number: 22376 From: Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 08:01:11 EDT Subject: Dignitas --part1_4a.20fec780.2c721a07_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 18/08/2003 10:00:49 GMT Standard Time, S Stodolsky writes: > The law in The Netherlands permits only physical reasons to be used as > a basis for assisted death. Euthanasia is only available to residents > in The Netherlands, and other countries may also have such > restrictions, making this option difficult for non-residents. > > Recently a terminally ill english man left Britain, travelled to Switzerland and terminated his life through 'Dignitas'. So I can confirm that the facility is available to non Swiss residents. The media did their usual sensationalisation of the story by suggesting that his relatives should be criminalised for assisting him in actually leaving the country but fortunately, even the authorities saw reason on this occasion and finally issued a statement saying that although they didn't agree with the actions of the relatives, criminal proceedings against them would be inappropriate. At the time I checked out the website that details the law that allows 'Dignitas' to operate and found that by American and British standards the Swiss would permit a far better standard of preservation methodology to be performed without the breaking of their laws. The major downside is that the law states quite clearly that no individual or organisation is allowed to profit from the demise of the 'suicidee'. This is where you would need to employ specialist legal expertise as 'Dignitas' is registered as a charitable organisation run by volunteer staff. As to whether any of the existing cryonics organisations would be regarded in the same way with full time employees and supporting the liabilities of a private company is something that I am not qualified to say . I know that Alcor is a 'non profit' organisation with no issued stock, shareholders, and pays no dividends, however, as to whether this meets the Swiss criteria for 'non profit' would need further investigation. I know that their are probably many ways around this but it would still need someone with the necessary expertise in international law to identify them. IMO it's definetely worth the time of someone with the legal expertise to look further into this issue. I've included a link that is a good starting point for those who may want to research this thread further. <A HREF="http://www.chninternational.com/switzerland_and_assisted_suicide.htm">SWITZERLAND AND ASSISTED SUICIDE</A> Regards..... Tim Hanson. --part1_4a.20fec780.2c721a07_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22376