X-Message-Number: 11436 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: to Hawkeye: about death and cryonics Date: Sun, 21 Mar 1999 23:01:15 +1100 (EST) To Hawkeye, whoever you are: The main investment you make in cryonics is your yearly dues, which vary with the organization. NO cryonics organization I know of (and I know them all) insists that you irrevocably write over your insurance policy(ies) to them. Even when legally you must do that, they will happily execute a document allowing you to get it back with no complaints or problems. (Yes, some insurance companies insist that you go that far, but many do not). As you might guess, the main aim of an insurance policy is to provide the money required for your suspension when you do not have enough to pay for it already. Some people take out term policies and also start saving, so that when they are old enough they have the necessary money. This works, although (at least for Alcor) again you do not give them ANY of this money until you need to be suspended. Basically you execute a trust with you as trustee while you are alive. As trustee there is no restriction on what you do with the money in the event that you learn that you'll be immortal, or for any other reason. You are required, of course, to keep your cryonics society aware at all times of whether or not the money will go to them if you die. Otherwise you can do what you want with it. (Among other things, one of my own current activities consists of working out a trust so that I can stop paying for a term policy; Alcor has requirements which they will send to you if asked. In my case the problem is made even more complex due to various Australian tax laws, irrelevant to you). Finally, you raise the issue of "death". There is a different way of looking at cryonics and what we intend to do. Basically cryonicists have a different DEFINITION OF DEATH than the common one, and intend to be suspended not after they have died (by their definition) but after they have died by SOCIETY'S definition. Cryonicists believe that you are not dead unless the information required to recreate you has been totally and provably destroyed. The current definition of SOCIETY (which periodically changes, a fact which should cause suspicion in itself!) is that CURRENT methods of revival fail to revive you. I will expand on these two definitions a bit, just to make the difference clear. The first thing that happened, in the 1950's, was that doctor's discovered that they could revive some people whose hearts and lungs had stopped pumping, at normal temperature for as long as 3 minutes afterwards and much longer if their temperature had gone down close to (but not below) 0 C. Formerly someone was simply declared dead if they stopped breathing. So the first change in society's definition of death came in the 1950's. More recently there has been work (NOT by cryonicists, though cryonicists have paid close attention --- and in fact in one cryonics laboratory they've worked out how to do even better with dogs (and probably human beings)) which successfully revived people after over 10 minutes without heartbeat or breathing. This advance hasn't yet seeped into many people's minds, but it is real. In at least one case, one scientist-doctor working in this field was able to revive someone after ONE HOUR. He happened to be working in the emergency room of his hospital when someone was brought in who had lost a lot of blood, and by applying the methods he knew with animals he revived this patient. Naturally this means that one more set of people who might otherwise have simply been declared dead will now be considered alive, and revived. Given that we can be suspended for centuries, it does not seem to us at all wise to depend on a definition of death which changes with time. Note that our definition above aims to be ABSOLUTE: something which will not change with time. It does not depend on just what drugs and technology happens to be available at a particular time and place. But don't misunderstand. Someone who has wasted away to a skeleton would be considered "dead" by both society at large and by cryonicists. For that matter, if their brain had somehow been destroyed completely, most cryonicists would consider the person dead, too. Moreover, our definition, in at least one class of cases, would say that someone is "dead" when society might not: I refer to cases of severe brain damage due to accidents or brain tumors. It's not enough that the brain ceases to work; it must cease to exist. But if you suffer such damage, then we would consider you "dead", even if your heart continued to beat and you continued to breathe. (We would naturally want proof that your brain no longer existed here). Such cases nowadays often cause much confusion among relatives and even doctors about what to do. They're still breathing, aren't they? So our definition of death does not coincide with society's definition, it doesn't simply claim that all those thought to be dead are actually alive, it also has a class of patients dead by our definition but not by society's. There is finally another difference between cryonics ideas and society at large. Cryonicists have a wide variety of opinions about just how badly they might be damaged and still want revival. Those papers to arrange for cryonic suspension which I have personally seen all allow YOU to decide just how badly you may be damaged before the cryonics society decides not to suspend you. Seen in another way, it allows YOU to decide just when you are dead, NOT society. And your cryonics society will follow your definition. I hope that these comments clarify cryonics a bit for you. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11436