On Wed, 21 Jul 2010, Ed Weick wrote: > The movie Soylent Green has a passage about this kind of thing. When > they are ready to die and leave the abysmal place the world has > become, people can go to a place in which they are put onto a > comfortable stretcher and wheeled into theater. They are then given > chemicals that will make them close down. As they are doing so, > beautiful music is played (parts of Beethoven's Pastoral in the movie) > and scenes of deer in pastures and bounding through woods are > projected onto a large screen above them. What a way to go! > > Ed
I wouldn't trust any chemicals to provide a benign exit, unless they have been applied in lighter doses to people who were successfully resuscitated and confirmed their inobtrusive action. I recall an episode of Jonathan Miller's "The Body in Question", where he demonstrated the effect of breathing an atmosphere devoid of oxygen - I believe he used pentane or hexane, but anything would work other than CO2 (or N2?) or other gases with a physiotropic effect - and his brain function gently derailed without him being the least aware, until he was rescued as planned by assistants. As long as the gas can be exhaled and flushed away so that CO2 doesn't build up, such as happens when exhaled breath is confined in the neighbourhood of the face, the body's defence mechanism does not kick in. This is because it is designed to detect CO2 building up, not oxygen being absent. In such a condition brain function first becomes incompetent, muddled, then ultimately shuts down, without any distress, and by the time death comes, the brain is completely unable to register the event. I rather expect it must be the most humane and painless way to extinguish life. Upon resuscitation, Miller affirmed that he had not noticed that his monitoring task of printing out the alphabet had become steadily cruder and more error prone, nor had he any recollection of finally failing altogether. He had literally simply drifted off. -Pete _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
