20 replies to this topic

[anti_transient]

The Idea
Transcending Cryonics with Euthanasia

Definition of the Idea as I see it
To pass beyond the current limits of cryonics by the practice of suspending the life of a consenting individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition before such a malady ends their life “naturally” & lessens their chances of reanimation due to tissue degradation &/or other malignant circumstances.

Obviously, this isn't an original idea. I take no credit for forming the idea. I created the definition above because I feel it's important that an action be defined so we can have a clear vision of what should be done in accordance with it.

It occurs to me that this idea is a necessary addition to the science of cryonics. I see no reason why anyone who is capable of making a conscious decision regarding their own mortality should be forced to literally rot away before being cryopreserved. For example; what if you had planned on being cryogenically frozen, only to later be diagnosed with brain cancer? Depending on the type of brain cancer you've been diagnosed with, continuing your life now means that you are subject to any number of things happening to you before you finally succumb to death, including, but not limited to...

Memory loss
Paralysis on one side of the body
Reduced mental capacity (cognitive function)
Impaired speech
Inability to write
Lack of recognition
Seizures
Behavioral and emotional changes
Hearing loss
Vision loss, drooping eyelid, or crossed eyes

Keep in mind that this is only one specific example. I believe there are many other instances in which it would be beneficial to suspend ones life in the sake of self-preservation rather than continue it with knowledge of the extreme damage which will occur as a result.

I personally don't know if this issue has received any notable attention, however, I feel it's important that it does. In addition, I am unaware of the proper channels to go through in order to get something of this nature legalized. Any suggestions or input regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated. Or perhaps you feel this thread is completely ridiculous. I'd like to hear your comments as well! [lol]

[bgwowk]

For all the reasons you've stated, this is a recurring topic of discussion in cryonics. More than discussion, it's also been an item for action, having gone as far as the Appeals Court of California

http://www.alcor.org...mpAbstract.html

The court decision is interesting reading.

http://www.alcor.org...tedecision.html

The reasoning employed in the decision would seem to make judicial remedy unlikely without new legislation.

---BrianW

[anti_transient]

Dr. Wowk,

Thank you for your response. I understand that new laws have to be made before cryogenic suspension before natural death is to be a legal procedure. Is there anything that a common man such as I could do to assist in this process?

~Chris

[bgwowk]

Stay tuned with the community. Whenever there is a need for letter writing or political action, you'll know about it.

One thing I'll mention is that last year Ralph Merkle put out a call for political contributions from individuals (the only kind allowed) to Arizona legislators who respect cryonics rights. The campaign raised more than $30K, which is substantial by state standards. That surprised a lot of people, and put cryonics on the legislative map as an interest group worth hearing. Watch for another campaign next year.

---BrianW

[anti_transient]

I certainly will, & again, thank you for taking the time to respond!

~Chris

[iambhall]

The 1st case of the new supreme court is to look at Oregon physician-assisted suicide:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9595961/

http://news.google.c...ide&sa=N&tab=wn

The debate goes on...

[Lazarus Long]

Fascinating, I was also reviewing this subject and considering how it influences the subject of cryonics. Here is the NY Times article and an interesting editorial by them.

http://www.nytimes.c...artner=homepage

Administration Urges Court to Strike Down Assisted-Suicide Law

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 5, 2005
Filed at 12:24 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newly installed Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday sharply questioned a lawyer arguing for preservation of Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, noting the federal government's tough regulation of addictive drugs.

The 50-year-old Roberts, hearing his first major oral argument since succeeding William H. Rehnquist at the helm of the court, seemed skeptical of the Oregon law, and the outcome of this case was as unclear after the argument as before.

At the outset, Roberts laid a barrage of questions on Oregon Senior Assistant Attorney General Robert Atkinson before he could finish his first sentence.

''It's a tough case,'' noted Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate, who with Roberts and others got immersed in one of the most vexing cases of the court's term. Justices pondered whether the federal government has the power to block doctors from helping terminally ill patients end their lives.

As they did so, demonstrators -- some carrying signs saying ''My Life, My Death, My Decision'' -- carried their pleas to the courthouse steps.

Inside, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor seemed ready to back the law allowing dying patients to obtain lethal doses of medication from their doctors.

Although O'Connor could provide the fifth vote in Oregon's favor, she likely will be off the court before the case is decided. A 4-4 tie would be decided by a new justice.

Voters in Oregon have twice endorsed doctor-assisted suicide, but the Bush administration has aggressively challenged the state law, the only one of its kind in the nation.

O'Connor immediately challenged Solicitor General Paul Clement, asking if federal drug laws also prevented doctors from participating in the execution of murderers.

Kennedy said he found it ''odd'' that the U.S. attorney general determined physician-assisted suicide to be an abuse of drug laws, when the state of Oregon strictly limited how the drugs could be administered and in what cases.

''I don't think it's odd,'' Clement replied, noting that federal laws regulating drug use have been in place for more than 90 years.

The case was heard by justices touched personally by illness. Three justices -- O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens -- have had cancer, and a fourth -- Stephen Breyer -- has a spouse who counsels young cancer patients who are dying.

Their longtime colleague, Rehnquist, who once wrote about the ''earnest and profound debate'' over doctor-assisted suicide, died a month ago after battling untreatable cancer for nearly a year.

In 1997 the court found that the terminally ill have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide. O'Connor provided a key fifth vote in that decision, which left room for state-by-state experimentation.

The appeal is a turf battle of sorts, not a constitutional showdown. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, a favorite among the president's base of religious conservatives, decided in 2001 to pursue doctors who help people die.

Hastening someone's death is an improper use of medication and violates federal drug laws, Ashcroft reasoned, an opposite conclusion than the one reached by Janet Reno, the Clinton administration attorney general.

Oregon filed a lawsuit to defend its law, which took effect in 1997 and has been used by 208 people.

The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government can trump the state.

''It could be close,'' said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University and former Supreme Court clerk. ''It is a wrenching issue. It's one of the most difficult decisions any family needs to make. There's a lot of discomfort with having the government at any level get involved.''

Under Rehnquist's leadership the court had sought to embolden states to set their own rules.

The administration lost at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which said that Ashcroft's ''unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide.''

In Oregon, the first assisted-suicide law won narrow approval, just a 51 percent majority, in 1994. An effort to repeal it in 1997 was rejected by 60 percent of voters.
(excerpt)

Editorial
The Right to Die
http://www.nytimes.c.../05wed2.html?hp

***

Oregonians voted in favor of the Death With Dignity Act in 1994, and three years later they voted against repeal. The Oregon law allows terminally ill people who are likely to die within six months to receive drugs to end their lives. When John Ashcroft, a longtime opponent of assisted suicide, became attorney general in 2001, he issued an edict that doctors who prescribe drugs that are used to commit suicide can be prosecuted under the federal Controlled Substances Act. The state of Oregon and a group of terminally ill patients challenged this Ashcroft directive and won.

This case nominally involves two hot-button issues: the right of terminally ill people to end their lives, and the allocation of power between the federal government and states. But the Court of Appeals was right to resolve it more simply, through a careful interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act. Mr. Ashcroft claimed that the law gave him the power to overrule Oregon's assisted suicide policy. But when Congress passed the act, it clearly intended to prohibit ordinary drug abuse, not to set out a federal policy on assisted suicide.

Opponents of assisted suicide have never been able to persuade Congress to outlaw assisted suicide directly. In the absence of a Congressional law, Mr. Ashcroft had no authority to interfere with the decision of Oregon's voters.

In his zeal to stop assisted suicide, Mr. Ashcroft, a self-described legal conservative, turned his back on two principles that are sacred to legal conservativism. First, he refused to strictly, or even accurately, construe a Congressional statute. Instead, he inserted meaning in it that did not belong there, giving himself power that he should not have had. Second, he ignored conservative dogma about deference to the states, especially on matters like regulating medical practice, a core state concern.
(excerpt)

Text: Oregon's Death With Dignity Act

Complete Coverage: Court in Transition

[anti_transient]

This is all very interesting to me. I wonder how long the case will take to resolve...

[icyT]

I always thought that cryonics in face of death was a given...

I don't want to be frozen after I'm dead, then I'll start to break down and stuff...

[boundlesslife]

(The below quotes are from postings by anti_transient. For some reason, the 'Quote=' utility doesn't seem to work very well with names that have special characters in them.)

The Idea
Transcending Cryonics with Euthanasia

Definition of the Idea as I see it
To pass beyond the current limits of cryonics by the practice of suspending the life of a consenting individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition before such a malady ends their life “naturally” & lessens their chances of reanimation due to tissue degradation &/or other malignant circumstances.

I personally don't know if this issue has received any notable attention, however, I feel it's important that it does.

Very important! As bgwowk points out (above), a case of many years ago (brain tumor; permission denied) was one of the first attempts to approach this question directly, in the case of a cryonicist.

In addition, I am unaware of the proper channels to go through in order to get something of this nature legalized. Any suggestions or input regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated. Or perhaps you feel this thread is completely ridiculous. I'd like to hear your comments as well!

Yesterday (in Phoenix, AZ) we had an opportunity to hear John Abraham, Executive Director of Compassion and Choices of Arizona) link speak on end-of-life choices, and he pointed out a new "wrinkle" in hospice that may aid in qualifying for this status. As he put it:

"All you have to do is stop eating and drinking; this is called 'failure to thrive'.  Then, it's automatic for hospice qualification.  The Coroner is not even called, when you die."

Maybe this is too simplified a way to describe it, for cryonics purposes, but it is an interesting development. A brief Google-search turns up the following links, which illustrate the point. Two hospice organizations refer to it as a "hot news" item: link, link. A third source link gives a more detailed picture.

Interestingly, among the four main causes for "failure to thrive" that are criteria for diagnosis of a terminal condition and thus admission to hospice, several could be useful to cryonicists (from the third link above):

Four syndromes are prevalent and predictive of adverse outcomes in patients with failure to thrive: impaired physical function, malnutrition, depression, and cognitive impairment.

"Depression" is an especially fuzzy and open ended item.

The most common psychiatric condition in older persons is depression.16 Depression can be a cause and a consequence of failure to thrive. Therefore, screening for depression is necessary for all patients who exhibit characteristics of failure to thrive.13 Elderly patients who are depressed are more likely to complain of physical problems than to mention conventional depressive symptoms (such as mood changes) and may manifest depression as weight loss. Traditional signs of depression in young persons, such as changes in attention span, concentration, and memory, are often misdiagnosed in elderly persons as dementia.16

Depression that occurs for the first time late in life is frequent in patients with significant chronic disease; the impact of these medical conditions is increased by depression.17 A delay in the diagnosis and treatment of depression in elderly patients may accelerate the decline associated with failure to thrive and increase morbidity and mortality. The Geriatric Depression Scale (Figure 1)18 and the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia19 are useful tools for assessing this dynamic in patients with failure to thrive.20

The short-form outline of the depression rating scale presented by the above linked article is as follows:

Geriatric Depression Scale (Short Form)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For each question, choose the answer that best describes how you felt over the past week.

  1. Are you basically satisfied with your life? Yes/NO
  2. Have you dropped many of your activities and interests? YES/No
  3. Do you feel that your life is empty? YES/No
  4. Do you often get bored? YES/No
  5. Are you in good spirits most of the time? Yes/NO
  6. Are you afraid that something bad is going to happen to you? YES/No
  7. Do you feel happy most of the time? Yes/NO
  8. Do you often feel helpless? YES/No
  9. Do you prefer to stay at home, rather than going out and doing new things? YES/No
  10. Do you feel you have more problems with memory than most people? YES/No
  11. Do you think it is wonderful to be alive now? Yes/NO
  12. Do you feel pretty worthless the way you are now? YES/No
  13. Do you feel full of energy? YES/No
  14. Do you feel that your situation is hopeless? YES/No
  15. Do you think that most people are better off than you are? YES/No
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: The scale is scored as follows: 1 point for each response in capital letters. A score of 0 to 5 is normal; a score above 5 suggests depression and warrants a follow-up interview; a score above 10 almost always indicates depression.

To get the best score, you need to be prepared, of course. Some suggested answers:

1. Are you basically satisfied with your life? Yes/NO

NO! I grow old and fall apart quickly. Something better must be possible!

2. Have you dropped many of your activities and interests? YES/No

YES! Far too many! There's not enough time to really get started on most of them, and how can you focus on anything but life extension when you see a bullet coming straight at your head, only a few thousand days away!

3. Do you feel that your life is empty? YES/No

YES! I'm surrounded by idiots who think they're going to go to some kind of heaven and become youthful and happy again, when they die. It's like being in a Nazi prison camp, except that almost everyone seems to be looking forward to going to the gas chambers, vs. not wanting to do that.

4. Do you often get bored? YES/No

YES! I'm especially bored when someone knocks on my door and wants to give me a bible.

5. Are you in good spirits most of the time? Yes/NO

NO! Have a look at my answer to number 3, above.

6. Are you afraid that something bad is going to happen to you? YES/No

YES! If I don't check out of this place soon and get headed toward a future "destination", it's likely that I'll either croak without warning and lose most of my synapses, or I'll wither into a state where I'll forget where I was headed in the first place, and not get there.

7. Do you feel happy most of the time? Yes/NO

NO! I used to expect that within a few decades, people in the world would understand what was going to happen to them in less than a hundred years and take sensible action to avoid those consequences. Now I see that they're still jumping into the sea like lemmings, exhibiting tremendous creativity in imagining explanations for anything that is in conflict with their delusions.

8. Do you often feel helpless? YES/No

YES! Again, have a look at my answer to number 3. The answer to number 7, now, applies also.

9. Do you prefer to stay at home, rather than going out and doing new things? YES/No

YES! What kind of new things are you talking about, anyway? Staying at home, at least you have the Internet. Go outside and you're surrounded by zombies! It's like "going into the Matrix" and seeing people scarfing up blue pills as if they were uncontrolled drugs.

10. Do you feel you have more problems with memory than most people? YES/No

YES! They all seem to be good at trivia games. I don't even know what they're talking about, for the most part!

11. Do you think it is wonderful to be alive now? Yes/NO

NO! It's horrible, as compared with what it would be like if we didn't grow old and could look back into the past and see it as some kind of "living death camp".

12. Do you feel pretty worthless the way you are now? YES/No

YES! Compared with what I could be "worth" in the future, I'm comparatively worthless now. So, get out of my way and let me go!

13. Do you feel full of energy? YES/No

YES! It really energizes me to see that the people who constructed this evaluation tool capitalized the wrong answer to this question. If I was depressed, do you think I'd be full of energy? Of course not! So, give me an extra point on this one, even if it's worded wrong.

14. Do you feel that your situation is hopeless? YES/No

YES, unless I can climb aboard what I believe to be a high-speed rocket sled to the future, and get out of this dump.

15. Do you think that most people are better off than you are? YES/No

YES, from the standpoint that they are like flies that don't see the windshield coming at them, so when they go "splat" against it, they'll never even know what hit them. I have to worry about whether or not the cryonics organization I'm signed up with will survive, and whether or not those who make it into the future will understand enough about what we went through to want to recover those of us they can, and let us join them in mankind's trek into the future. If you're talking about "better off" being a state of total complacency, like a contented cow, YES... they're better off!

That's probably enough for now, but don't forget the magic words, "Failure to thrive"! It could be your fastest way into hospice, when you want to set yourself up to launch. For me, it may be decades, despite the fact that I just turned 70, but I'd like to be in position and well balanced, when the time comes that strapping in and heading off for the future makes the most sense. How to do that, itself? Well there are a lot of ways, as discussed in Final Exit, but the fastest, easiest way may be to simply inhale helium. It's readily available (Wal Mart or Toys-R-Us, for balloons), and Final Exit has more details.

When that time comes, and, having ceased eating and drinking, so as to "fail to thrive" in slow motion, you're in hospice status, then the next step might be to announce that you're going to "fail to thrive" in a high-speed mode, by ceasing to consume oxygen. In the right state, with advance notice to everyone who might stand in the way, and with the media present to film any "bad guys" who might want to slow up your pronouncement, you could be on your way in minutes.

Is it such a bad thing to go without oxygen momentarily, so as to "flat line"? I'll have to leave it to guys like bgwowk to comment, but if your goal is to simply cool quickly, cryoprotect, and conserve structure, this might be less damaging than many of the other options you might consider. At least, you wouldn't have to go through a protracted stage of agonal metabolic conditions which in itself could be quite damaging!

Boundless Life,

boundlesslife

[bgwowk]

Hi "boundlesslife"! Hope you are well.

As you probably know, refusal of food and fluids has been available for a long time as an option for patients in the final stages of terminal illness. You seem to be suggesting that it is also available as an option for not-so-terminal patients. Are you saying that any patient with a chronic illness, or early diagnosis of progressive dementia, can just stop eating and drinking and qualify for "failure to thrive" hospice admission with full narcotic palliation of thirst, no questions asked? Seems a bit far-fetched.

I'm a bit unclear about the role of depression in this scenario. You suggest answering the depression questionaire to maximize a diagnosis of clinical depression, but isn't that likely to result in an attempt to treat depression rather than make a patient comfortable while they die of depression?

To answer your medical question, reduction of inhaled oxygen concentration is absolutely painless to humans. Asphyxiation is only uncomfortable (agonizing!) if it results in a buildup of carbon dioxide, which happens if breathing is prevented or confined to a closed space.

HOWEVER, don't confuse refusal of food and fluids with active euthanasia by gas or other means. If it were learned that such things went on in a hospice, I don't think that hospice would be permitted to continue operating in the U.S. Any instance of active euthanasia, at home or in hospice, runs a high risk of being a Coroner's case. Unless you are in state where it is legal, and using duly approved procedures, don't do it!

---BrianW

[boundlesslife]

Hi "boundlesslife"!  Hope you are well.

As you probably know, refusal of food and fluids has been available for a long time as an option for patients in the final stages of terminal illness.  You seem to be suggesting that it is also available as an option for not-so-terminal patients.  Are you saying that any patient with a chronic illness, or early diagnosis of progressive dementia, can just stop eating and drinking and qualify for "failure to thrive" hospice admission with full narcotic palliation of thirst, no questions asked?  Seems a bit far-fetched.

I'm a bit unclear about the role of depression in this scenario.  You suggest answering the depression questionaire to maximize a diagnosis of clinical depression, but isn't that likely to result in an attempt to treat depression rather than make a patient comfortable while they die of depression?

To answer your medical question, reduction of inhaled oxygen concentration is absolutely painless to humans.  Asphyxiation is only uncomfortable (agonizing!) if it results in a buildup of carbon dioxide, which happens if breathing is prevented or confined to a closed space.

HOWEVER, don't confuse refusal of food and fluids with active euthanasia by gas or other means.  If it were learned that such things went on in a hospice, I don't think that hospice would be permitted to continue operating in the U.S.  Any instance of active euthanasia, at home or in hospice, runs a high risk of being a Coroner's case.  Unless you are in state where it is legal, and using duly approved procedures, don't do it! 

---BrianW

Thanks for asking about wellness, BrianW. Well enough so that these ideas don't reflect any kind of urgent priority. Perhaps I made it sound too pat and simple, so that "no questions asked" would seem like a possible assumption.

In any case where there was no distinctive terminal illness, I'm sure there *would* be a *lot* of questions, particularly in the case of a cryonicist, and the one category of "Depression" would probably not in itself be enough, even if the tongue-in-cheek humorous answers I suggested were set aside and something more diplomatic were devised.

Failure to take food and water for sufficient time to produce a serious decline of health might be required, and this would only facilitate admission to hospice; not guarantee an autopsy-free exit; for us, "final" exit is not the idea anyway. (Yet, the book "Final Exit" is a good one to have and read; many of the self-exit methods that one might consider are not that simple; the body "doesn't like to die", and fights back, for example by regurgitating many of the compounds thought to be usable, unless other compounds are used to suppress this; in this light, helium has great advantages).

The medical question aspect was not so much intended to address the physiological experience (though that is certainly inportant, and your answer was very helpful), but rather to explore the possible impact of brief anoxia on the protocol used. If anoxia were only used for a period necessary to clearly establish "flatline" for legal purposes, assuming that there were no complications such as a hostile coroner, would there be any danger of reperfusion injury when support was resumed, to maintain tissue viability during the cooldown and start of washout?

Here, presumably, care would be required to suppress spontaneous resumption of heartbeat, to avoid the "beating heart after pronouncement" dilemma that was experienced in one of the early high-viability cases; that kind of response makes the support look too much like standard resuscitation (with associated questions of whether of not the pronouncement was valid).

Finally, your observations about misuse of hospice are well taken. The comment by Abraham that "once you're in hospice, the coroner is not called" was intended (by him) to apply to the standard case of an individual who (for example) had executed an Alzheimer's Directive and was not being given nourishment, on the basis of that directive, after a valid diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

In the case of a cryonicist, you'd want the coroner to be fully in the loop. A case in point is the 1990 suspension in Sonoma, California, where the Coroner called up after inquiries by the hospice nurses, concerning a voluntary dehydration in progress, and assured us that he was aware of cryonics and fully supported the approach being taken.

He even told us that, "If the police should call about suspicions raised by the neighbors that something funny was going on," we should call him, day or night, and he would then reassure the police that there was no problem! A *very* cooperative and understanding coroner, who (in this case) had heard Jerry Leaf speak at a coroner's convention, and was sympathetic to cryonics.

(Notwithstanding this one, very positive outcome, there are certainly many bridges to cross before we'll "have it the way we want it to be"! The "failure to thrive" development is just one small piece of an enormous puzzle, in its earliest stages of evolution.)

boundlesslife

[bgwowk]

The medical question aspect was not so much intended to address the physiological experience (though that is certainly inportant, and your answer was very helpful), but rather to explore the possible impact of brief anoxia on the protocol used. If anoxia were only used for a period necessary to clearly establish "flatline" for legal purposes, assuming that there were no complications such as a hostile coroner, would there be any danger of reperfusion injury when support was resumed, to maintain tissue viability during the cooldown and start of washout?

Ah, now I understand your question. The answer is no, cardiac arrest caused by a drop in ambient oxygen concentration would not result in any more anoxic injury than dying by most other means. Why? Because in chronic death scenarios, anoxia secondary to respiratory failure is usually the cause of cardiac arrest anyway.

By the way, as far as I know, it's perfectly legal for a terminal patient on supportive oxygen care to discontinue that care at will, even if the discontinuation will result in death.

On a more positive note, Happy Thanksgiving.

---BrianW

[AaronCW]

Is there currently a concensus on what the most favorable conditions would be under which a patient could be legally declared dead before undergoing a suspension procedure? This would assume that the patient has a free range of choices in regard to the method by which they are declared legally dead.

Putting the issue of legality aside, how might those conditions be different if the declaration of legal death was not required before the procedure was initiated?

[VictorBjoerk]

euthanasia may unfortunately be the best thing to do if the person begin showing signs of dementia or any other brain disease.

[bgwowk]

Is there currently a concensus on what the most favorable conditions would be under which a patient could be legally declared dead before undergoing a suspension procedure? This would assume that the patient has a free range of choices in regard to the method by which they are declared legally dead.

Putting the issue of legality aside, how might those conditions be different if the declaration of legal death was not required before the procedure was initiated?

The best way to do a cryopreservation would be to place an anesthetized patient on cardiopulmonary bypass as would be done for conventional heart surgery. The heart-lung machine would maintain blood circulation and oxygenation as temperature was lowered, thereby avoiding ischemic injury. The end result of cryopreservation would still be irreversible by present technology, but there would be no clearly-defined point at which the patient became legally deceased. The point in the procedure at which death was considered to occur would be a matter of custom and perhaps new law. Alternatively, irreversible cryopreservation may someday be considered a legally distinct third state.

[niner]

Is there currently a concensus on what the most favorable conditions would be under which a patient could be legally declared dead before undergoing a suspension procedure? This would assume that the patient has a free range of choices in regard to the method by which they are declared legally dead.

Putting the issue of legality aside, how might those conditions be different if the declaration of legal death was not required before the procedure was initiated?

The best way to do a cryopreservation would be to place an anesthetized patient on cardiopulmonary bypass as would be done for conventional heart surgery. The heart-lung machine would maintain blood circulation and oxygenation as temperature was lowered, thereby avoiding ischemic injury. The end result of cryopreservation would still be irreversible by present technology, but there would be no clearly-defined point at which the patient became legally deceased. The point in the procedure at which death was considered to occur would be a matter of custom and perhaps new law. Alternatively, irreversible cryopreservation may someday be considered a legally distinct third state.

This would seem to be optimal. There must be some country on Earth where this would not be prevented by law. How about on a yacht in international waters? A terminally ill person with a lot of money could construct the necessary facility in their home, requiring only the cooperation of some friendly cryonicist doctors. As long as everyone was ok with it, it's unlikely that anyone would ever find out. I find it highly annoying that the state would prevent me or anyone else from doing this given a terminal illness.

[lunarsolarpower]

I find it highly annoying that the state would prevent me or anyone else from doing this given a terminal illness.

I'm glad to see even you have your limits as to how much power you're willing to cede the state.

[JLL]

How about on a yacht in international waters?

That's not a bad idea.

Alternatively, http://seasteading.org/

[Mind]

Another blog post relating to this discussion

[catherine]

The Idea
Transcending Cryonics with Euthanasia

Definition of the Idea as I see it
To pass beyond the current limits of cryonics by the practice of suspending the life of a consenting individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition before such a malady ends their life "naturally" & lessens their chances of reanimation due to tissue degradation &/or other malignant circumstances.

Obviously, this isn't an original idea. I take no credit for forming the idea. I created the definition above because I feel it's important that an action be defined so we can have a clear vision of what should be done in accordance with it.

It occurs to me that this idea is a necessary addition to the science of cryonics. I see no reason why anyone who is capable of making a conscious decision regarding their own mortality should be forced to literally rot away before being cryopreserved. For example; what if you had planned on being cryogenically frozen, only to later be diagnosed with brain cancer? Depending on the type of brain cancer you've been diagnosed with, continuing your life now means that you are subject to any number of things happening to you before you finally succumb to death, including, but not limited to...

Memory loss
Paralysis on one side of the body
Reduced mental capacity (cognitive function)
Impaired speech
Inability to write
Lack of recognition
Seizures
Behavioral and emotional changes
Hearing loss
Vision loss, drooping eyelid, or crossed eyes

Keep in mind that this is only one specific example. I believe there are many other instances in which it would be beneficial to suspend ones life in the sake of self-preservation rather than continue it with knowledge of the extreme damage which will occur as a result.

I personally don't know if this issue has received any notable attention, however, I feel it's important that it does. In addition, I am unaware of the proper channels to go through in order to get something of this nature legalized. Any suggestions or input regarding this matter would be greatly appreciated. Or perhaps you feel this thread is completely ridiculous. I'd like to hear your comments as well! [lol]