X-Message-Number: 11593
From: 
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 14:07:30 EDT
Subject: hospice again

Thomas Nord wrote:

>Bob mentioned hospice as seem to be good if it all can be done without pain,
>as I know can be a problem sometimes and that's where assisted comes in. But 
>how can that be done without damage for perfusion and reanimation?

Again, the hospice physician in charge is concerned mainly with the physical 
and psychological comfort of the patient and family, and not with prolonging 
the dying process. Alleviation of pain is a priority. As far as I am aware, 
there are few situations where it is necessary for the patient, with or 
without assistance, to take deliberate measures for suicide in order to avoid 
extreme deterioration before death. In almost all cases, as far as I know, 
the deterioration caused by disease in the last stages before death is not 
large compared with that encountered previously and subsequently. I believe 
results with hospice stack up favorably against almost all other scenarios.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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