X-Message-Number: 33436 Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 09:17:14 -0500 Subject: Cancer patient ending his life in Oregon, USA Today article m... From: Rudi Hoffman <> --00163641735901253f049de5277f Hello, Cryonetters: Someone forwarded this link to me today. It is about a cancer patient using the Oregon "Death with Dignity" laws to voluntarily deanimate. Hopefully, this will revive the nationwide discussion of giving humans greater options on end of life choices. The implications for cryonics are obvious. I could be wrong, but it is my opinion that some type of "voluntary deanimation" mechanism would seem to be VITAL and NECESSARY part of enabling consistent optimized suspensions. To this end, myself and several activists have been quietly trying to determine the optimal way to raise this issue and make the changes necessary in law to enable legal, ethical assisted suicide especially for cryoncists. Surprisingly, this is controversial even among cryonicists, it would seem. For the last 17 years, I have read with great dismay the details of multiple suspension arrangements gone wrong. Just last year, Alcor has engaged in two separate lawsuits as a function of members not being allowed to choose the timing and circumstances of their deanimation. Don't take my word for it, go to the Alcor and CI sites, dig into the "case summaries" and make your own conclusions. When cryonics protocols are only done after hours, days, weeks, and MONTHS after death and ischemia, cryonics looks...and may be...fraudulent. I do not think it should be particularly controversial to simply ask that a human being be "allowed" to have a suspension as good as a dog. As to the best way to go about influencing the culture to enable some type of voluntary/ assisted/ death for cryonicists (and noncryos, for that matter) I do not pretend to know. But keeping this issue as a front runner in the "components making for successful cryo-arrangements" makes sense. By the way, you must be an Oregon citizen for six months to utilize Oregon law...and you are obviously STILL not in Arizona or Michigan when you need to be. Welcome to the continuing Dark Ages...when religions and superstition rules... Here is the link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-07-RW_dying07_ST_N.htm?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d74d7889ebd7d7b%2C0 -- Warm Regards, Rudi Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU ChFC World's Leading Cryonics Insuror rudihoffman.com Former Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.com Board Member Salvation Army salvationarmy.org Member Alcor Life Extension Foundation alcor.org, Member Cryonics Institute cryonics.org Certified Financial Planner(TM) CFP Board of Standards Member World Transhumanist Association http://transhumanism.org/ Securities offered through Broker Dealer Financial Services Corp. Member FINRA and SIPC. --00163641735901253f049de5277f Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33436