X-Message-Number: 1819
Date: 24 Feb 93 18:31:01 EST
From: Garret Smyth <>
Subject: CRYONICS Cryonics law

Cryonicists may like to not that Graham Wilson does not represent Alcor
UK. (Not that I necessarily do, but my opinions are likely to be closer
to those of people signed up in the UK than Graham's.)

If I were draughting a law about cryonics I think I would have taken a
different approach to Graham Wilson. I think that a lot of the problems
that arise for patients is that they have few or no rights at all,
because the law regards them as dead. Hence families have more rights
than they do, and contract law doesn't apply. I would remedy this by
creat a third legal state between life and death which would allow
patients to have some, if not all, of the rights of the living. This
could be used to apply to "living" but non-compus mentus patients as
well as cryonics patients.

One aspect of the Cryonics Bill that disturbed me more than a little was
that I would not have fulfilled the necessary requirements to be deemed
to be signed up! Despite having been signed up with Alcor since 1986, and
having been in almost every national newspaper, on countless TV and Radio
programmes (UK and elsewhere - even Australia) stating that I want to be
suspended (I've had complete strangers come up to me and say something
like "You're the bloke having his head frozen!"), and generally making my
intent as widely known as possible, Graham's propsed law could actually
be used to *prevent* my suspension!

Incidentally, my understanding of the Anatomy Act (Eighteen thiry
something, I think) is that if the intent of the deceased is plain, then
it must be followed.


Something I must say in favour of Graham's oeuvre is that it is rather
more positively disposed towards cryonics than the one piece of
legisaltion anywhere in the world that specifically mentions cryonics. In
Canada (British Columbia, I think) cryonics has been banned outright!

Garret



Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1819