X-Message-Number: 16864
From: "Trygve Bauge" <>
Subject: Post mortem sign ups,  under cover and shameful or open and proud?
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 03:49:20 +0200

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I have received many confidential letters on the issue of post mortem sign ups.

One letter writer said:


>Go ahead and establish your facility and take the Australian case if you wish,
>but please do so quietly!  If you want to inspire public interest in 
>cryonics, then go public with your best cases, not your worst.

I am thankful for the many wise suggestions.
I will give the advice serious consideration.


At the same time, I do however, think that the many post mortem requests for 
cryonic suspension is a topic that we need to handle better than we do today, 
and that the solution is not to decline such requests, but to get enough 
publicity about the problem so that people actually will sign up on time.

E.g. the solution is not to decline such cases but to get the publicity about 
the problems with post mortem cases, so that cases that otherwise would have 
come in post mortem, henceforth come in pre mortem. One way to get such 
publicity is to do one post mortem case in the open, stating all its problems 
but that we are doing it anyway out of compassion 

even though the ods are smaller, and so to wake people up to the fact that they 
most likely wouldn't get the same help if they were as late to sign up, and that
as far as being brought back rather than just being cloned they better sign up 
pre mortem.


There is also of course the issue of all the kids that are in favour of cryonics
and want to freeze their parents and grand parents who were not in favour of 
cryonics. I think we for that reason for a long time to come will see a lot of 
post mortem request, in cases where the kids never brought up or dared to bring 
up the issue or simply couldn't sign up their relatives while the latter were 
alive.


I still think cryonics could benefit from accomodating such cases, by thereby 
getting more people and more resources. Rather than offending the people 
involved by turning down their post mortem requests we could have recruited 
these and their resources into the cryonic movement by being more accomodating.



Furthermore, I still think that a lot can be done to restore life even from long
dead corpses.

Thus I am inclined to assist in such cases. It is all a question as to what one 
want accomplished: I would like to preseve DNA fragments so that the corpse can 
be cloned.

I look upon maintaining the whole corpse as safer and offering more future 
possibilities than if one just maintained cell samples.

I look upon cloning from dead cell samples as a good case,

while others still look upon any case that can't just be thawed out and then be 
alive,
as a bad case.


Since most of the world's countries do not have cryonic storage facilities, I 
also think that much can be gained by publicly going through all the steps in 
setting up a facility and 

in carrying out a suspension, how adverse the case might be, and even if the 
case is as adverse as they can be. 

Maybe such a public process can lead the way to more facilities being set up,
since more people will have contributed to and learned from the public process.


There might still be many obstacles when it comes to setting up a Norwegian 
facility

and suspending the Australian case. Maybe we have to go through a lengthy 
political process 

to get it all done. But maybe, just maybe we by taking on such a process will 
make it so much easier for better cases to be suspended and facilities to be 
established in all the countries that cryonisists so far have not managed to set
up facilities in.


Maybe the media would show some interest for all the obstacles involved, and for
the challenge of overcoming all these?


E.g. In most European countries cryonisists have run into obstacles that so far 
have stopped them. Maybe the time has come to face up to these obstacles in the 
open, and do what it takes publically and politically to make cryonics a common 
and established procedure in these countries. Maybe the obstacles we face here 
only can be overcome if we do what it takes openly?


Sincerely,

Trygve Bauge

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