X-Message-Number: 12401 Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 16:03:53 -0700 From: Jeff Davis <> Subject: It's NOT suicide Friends, Recent posts concerning pre-mortem suspension and related matters have repeatedly involved the use of the word "suicide", and in so doing have tended to suggest that cryonic suspension is in some sense a form of suicide. HELLO!!! Time to get a clue, boys and girls! Find another term. Programmed deanimation. Pre-mortem suspension. Cryo-supression of biochemical metabolism. Low-temperature interruption of cellular homeostasis. Chemo-structural freeze-lock. Whatever works for you. But NOT suicide. Even post-mortem suspension is "mortem" at all only because legal and medical groups establish the "authoritative" definition of death. As almost all readers of this list should know, at the moment of declaration of death and for some indeterminate period thereafter, the "authoritative" definition of death--which definition carries with it a sense of irrevocable finality--is not death at all, but rather the condition more precisely to be described as the-state-wherein-we(meaning the medical establisment)-can't-do-anything-more-to-make-you-healthy-again, ie, "beyond help". Beyond whose help? Beyond the medical establishment's help? Yes. Beyond all help? No. Cryonic suspension, PARTICULARLY a deliberate, planned, and controlled pre-mortem suspension, is, by intention, and by the possibility (in my view the near certainty) of a successful outcome, the very antithesis of suicide. So if you find yourself involved in a discussion about physician-assisted suicide, or insurance/suicide issues, take a moment to make it clear that, in stark contrast to suicide's despair, desperation, and tragic loss, cryonics is a pro-actively life-affirming and life-saving strategy of dynamic optimism. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12401