X-Message-Number: 24360 From: Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 17:22:00 EDT Subject: Michig'n Suis'de Hi all: I have previously written about Oreg'n allowing ass'st'd suic'de, and the possibility of a terminally ill cryonicist going there and ending life while the body and mind remained fairly intact, as opposed to waiting for the painful end when brain death might make reanimation pointless, and multiple organ failure might make it difficult. Then Robert Ettinger wrote "In Michigan suic'de is not illegal, although assisting in a suic'de is. Also, in hospice programs the red tape is much reduced. It should only be necessary to persuade the medical examiner, in advance, to have a representative on hand when requested, to pronounce death, after assuring himself that the patient is competent, and waive autopsy. Everything could be set up for the cryonics team to go to work immediately." An excellent point. I would like to know in what other states suic'de is not illegal. Especially, Arizona or states near Alcor? The Immortalist says that as far as they can find, assisted suic'de is illegal in all states except Ore., Utah, North Carolina, and Wyoming. But where *unassisted* suic'de, suic'de itself is legal they do not say. Maybe most places allow suic'de, which would mean, I guess, that you could explain your intentions to the authorities to prevent autopsies and investigations, and they would do nothing to stop you. Can anyone check this out? This may make Michigan a better choice than Ore.. Ore. requires red tape, and that you be within six months of natural death. But if you have been diagnosed with early Alzheimer's you may be near brain death but a decade from full death. So Michigan would be better, at least if you could make the critical arrangements yourself, without involving "assistance" in the suic'de itself. It thus appears that when you are near death you might go to Michigan and rent a place near a cryonics facility. Then, since suic'de (but not assisted suic'de) is legal, you could set things up yourself. Not hard, since all that is needed is a bathtub and drugs. The Hemlock Society used to recommend getting a prescription for barbiturates and saving them up, to the lethal dose for suic'de. If you plan to go by hyperthermia and need only enough to insure unconsciousness, that shouldn't be too hard. (In Oreg'n they prefer drugs other than barbiturates now; you'd discuss this with your physician.) Then you call the cryonics rescue people and the medical examiner or physician to stand by, which appears legal so long as they don't assist. Then get in the tub, turn on the water and swallow the drugs. This would allow full cryonics procedures by experts to begin immediately, not just blood replacement and initial cooling, and your body does not have to be transferred by plane. I've given more thought to the problem of assuring sufficiently cold water. One could buy a tall tank or 50 gallon drum, fitted with an overflow hose near the top, and fill it with blocks of ice. Turn on a cold tap and run the water via a supply hose to the bottom. The overflow hose near the top would discharge into your tub. You'd get in the tub and take the drugs. It takes some time for the tank to fill to the level of the overflow, and then very cold ice water flows in and fills your tub. Due to the very great heat of fusion of ice, blocks would last a long time and cool lot of water from tap temperatures to almost-freezing. (It takes as much heat to change one unit of ice at freezing into water at the same temperature, as it does to raise the temperature 80 Deg C.) One could do the same by making a platform in the tub below the level of the overflow and high enough for a person to slip under it with legs and torso, and then putting the ice on the platform. When the water rises to that level it contacts the ice and becomes very cold. There are probably even easier ways and I invite people to think about them, and to discuss the issue. The law seems be very much more tolerant of such things than I had imagined. (I should again emphasize I am not a lawyer nor am I giving legal advice, and I do not urge any healthy person to commit suic'de. However, because the citizens of the United States ultimately run the country we have every right and even a responsibility to discuss the laws of our country, what they allow and do not allow, and how they might be changed. And that is exactly what I'm doing here. And, BTW, I am healthy and don't expect to face this choice for another thirty years or so.) Regards, Alan Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24360