X-Message-Number: 1393
From:  (David Lubkin)
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 92 11:20:56 EST
Subject: CRYONICS Autopsies

To date, I have received one response to my request for suggested cryonics-
enabling legislation.  While the current roundtable flaming is fascinating
(although it leaves me, as one who has little first-hand experience with the
principals, at a loss for whom to believe), the list's silence on an issue as
vital as legal blocks to cryonics dismays me.

>From my research on cryonics law (about which I will say more in another 
posting) it seems that perhaps our biggest problem is the risk of autopsy.  
Most or all states basically give the medical examiner (and often others as 
well) the right to order an autopsy whenever they want.  I have not yet found
any states with statutes that allow an individual or their family to stop 
this.  In the cases I've seen so far, when a family has tried to block a 
State-ordered autopsy, they have lost.

Clearly, the argument is between the needs for public safety (after death by
violence or unknown causes), public health (after death by infectious disease
or unknown causes), or public good (after death by anything the examiner 
thinks is interesting) and the rights of the individual to control his person.

Can people think of ways to strengthen the arguments for a right to block an
autopsy?  Even in New Hampshire, it would be pointless to introduce 
legislation.  The statist case is just too strong.

Another approach:  are there some less controversial steps we could advocate
that would push us closer to where such legislation could pass?


-- David Lubkin.

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Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom.  It is 
the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave.
                                        -- William Pitt, 1763
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