X-Message-Number: 16972
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:06:01 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #16967 - #16969

For John Grigg:

No, I haven't seen the film, for exactly the reasons you can guess.

However something does need explaining here. What happens with cryonics
is that we disagree strongly as to whether patients are/were dead in
the first place. If our suspended patients are NOT dead, then there is
no issue about either souls or death on their revival. If they ARE
dead, then no amount of effort and technology, even in the far future,
will bring them back.... after all, they were DEAD.

A cryonics interpretation of death requires first of all that no 
future technology can really bring the patient back. However there are
cases, particularly those involved with brain damage, in which a person
may die in OUR terms but not in those of contemporary medicine. An
advanced case of Alzheimer's will have virtually the entire upper brain
eaten away: dead in our terms but not those of present medicine.

If however a patient is NOT dead, then he's in exactly the same
situation as someone in a coma. No, we may not be able to help him
now, but eventually the technology needed will become available and
he/she can be brought back. Just how long that may take is an open
question.

Among other issues, this is why there is no real conflict between
cryonics and religion. We're trying to do medicine, nothing magic
and nothing to do with souls (in any spiritual sense of the word "soul").
Yes, for many Christians (or other religions too!) our ideas may be
hard to accept. Among other reasons for this is the accepting and
totally nonskeptical approach that many people take towards the 
statements of contemporary medicine... both Christians and others.
Their attitudes tell us much more about just how superstition survives
than anything about the real situation. Medicine is a form of engineering,
not science, and contains a good deal of superstition, even if its
labelled and presented as NOT superstition.

Naturally we cannot expect many people to accept cryonics until 
either the superstitious attitudes to "death" change or more see the
role of such superstition in our present-day lives.

		Best wishes and long long life to all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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