What about the second question: can creatures cease to exist withoutdying? Certainly things that never were alive, such as bubbles andstatues, can be deathlessly annihilated. Arguably, there are also waysthat living creatures can be deathlessly annihilated. It is plausibleto say that an amoeba's existence ends when it splits, replacingitself with two amoebas. Yet when amoebas split, the vital processesthat sustain them do not cease. If people could divide like amoebas,perhaps they, too could cease to exist without dying. (For a famousdiscussion of division and its implications, see Parfit 1981.)