X-Message-Number: 13135
From: Daniel Ust <>
Subject: Re: 13123 cryo preserving fetuses
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 11:17:09 -0500

On Fri, 21 Jan 2000 11:54:37 -0500 Marty Kardon  wrote:
>Without commenting upon the issue of whether or not abortion should or
shouldn't be available to people I must say that 
>cryopreserving fetuses strikes me as an off the wall idea.

Cryopreservation per se strikes most people as an off the wall idea.:)  If
we judge everything by that standard, think of how few new ideas we'd come
up with.

>First of all the process of abortion often injures the fetuses and, many
times, actually fails to remove the fetus intact. Of 
>course nano tech might allow as easily for the reassembly as it does for
reworking artherosclerosis but it almost sounds like 
>the cow from a hamburger cliche.

This is a non sequitir.  The current abortion techniques are basically done
to kill the fetus.  If a mother wanted to not kill her fetus, different,
less destructive techniques would be used.  The argument Marty offers is
like saying that current _embalming_ techniques do nothing to preserver
brain structure, ergo no one would ever opt for cryonics.:)

>Also I imagine rows of little beds ala Brave New World once these babies
are revived.  Who would want to raise them when its 
>easy enough to make your own kids? Answer - an organization, institution or
a few dedicated "rescuers."

So?  The same could be said about plain old cryonics.  One can extrapolate
whatever horror scenario one wants.  I think it highly unlikely.  I also
think that if a mother thought that was going to happen and didn't want it
to, she could still opt for regular abortion, killing the fetus completely.
(I'm not antiabortion.  In common parlance, I'm 100% pro-Choice.:)  Also, as
a friend of mine, Thomas Gramstad, suggested on another list
(Randian-abortion) the mother who wants to abort and cryopreserve might opt
for making sure the fetus is raised in a environment she likes.  (Hardcore
Objectivists, say, would not want their offspring raised to be Christians
and possibly vice versa.)  As long as the option of tradition abortion
exists, I don't see this as a problem.

I do, however, see such horror scenarios as a potential public relations
problem, but this is no different than any cryonics has faced already.

>There's enough to do in caring for a reviving people with families waiting
for them. Can't see where we would be going with 
>dewars full of aborted, damaged and unwanted fetuses.

It's not like they all have to be revived at once.  I imagine the people
funding and supporting this would be the ones charged with finding a place
for them in whatever future societies exist.  If not, then, well, so?  The
dewars don't take up that much space and would be funded by someone else.

The thing that really needs to be done is a market study and an actual pilot
program.

Long lives to each of you!

Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/

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