X-Message-Number: 14660 Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 17:31:56 -0700 From: Jeff Davis <> Subject: Re: Cryo-suspension for death row Friends, I can't really work up any enthusiasm for death row cryo-suspension as an application of cryonics. The death penalty is highly controversial and in a multitude of ways involves the worst of human behavior. Acrimony between political factions, interpersonal violence of the worst sort, before, during, and after the initial event(s). Revenge, justification, rationalization, violent emotionalism being denied or disingenuously being put forward as reason. Political expediency of the worst sort. I wouldn't want to see cryonics, which I view as a procedure suffused with hope, optimism, and life-affirming intent, associated in any way by the violence and human darkness which so completely colors the death penalty. In attempting to inform a wider constituency of the rational basis of cryonics, we are already challenged to overcome flawed definitions of "death", deeply ingrained old beliefs about the inevitability, irreversibilty, and naturalistic correctness, of death, and the "scientific impossibility" of cryonics. Do we really need to add to these, an application of cryonics which essentially puts it in the list with hanging, the electric chair, the gas chamber, and lethal injection? To do so defines cryonics in the public perception as a form of execution. If that isn't bad enough, the political motivations behind this misuse of cryonics, has it masquerading, in the most disingenuous and cynically vicious way, as a humane act. It allows the executioners, at the political level, to have it both ways: "We didn't *kill* the vile, subhuman, criminal scum, we just *cryonically suspended* him/her. (Wink, wink, smile, wave to the camera.)" Making it easier for political weasels to kill people feels like a very dangerous place to go. History suggests that as it is right now, it's already way too easy. Call me a purist, but I think cryonics is about hope, progress, rationalism, cultural honesty, compassion, and the ancient human quest to end the depredations of disease, aging, and death. If we want to promote it, let's reach out from that philosophical center. 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=14660