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