X-Message-Number: 22452 From: "Ben Best" <> Subject: Uniform Anatomical Gift Act URLs Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 16:38:12 -0700 As has been posted to CryoNet, the cemetery authorities in Michigan are attempting to bring the Cryonics Institute under its regulations and have issued a "Cease and Desist" order for taking new patients. It has been suggested on CryoNet that we agree to be subjected to these regulations, but I think we would have far more freedom to deliver the best in patient care if we could operate under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act as Alcor has done successfully for many years. Without the UAG authority, all procedures will have to be done in a funeral home by licensed funeral directors only -- there will be no authority for any action by a standby team, by helpful relatives or even by medical personnel which can legally be done to a "corpse" -- not even the administration of heparin or CPR. I am posting these URLs to CryoNet in the hope that there are people on the list with the knowledge or diligence to see possibilities in one of these links that could be used to help establish the Cryonics Institute as an Anatomical Donee. Alcor may be next!! So it behooves us to "put our heads together" on dealing with this problem. http://www.med.umich.edu/anatomy/donors/ This gives information on donation to medical schools in Michigan, but at the bottom there are references to registries unrelated to medical schools and hospitals, which would be relevant. The procedure for registration or authorization for these "registries" would be of interest. http://www.esjpc.com/a_cadaver.htm This analysis makes me wonder if there is so much respect being given to the rights of relatives (and victims?) to choose the disposition of remains -- if there should be respect for the choice of victims or relatives concerning *who* (what organization) the remains are given to (the donee). http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/fnact99/uaga87.pdf These guidelines of the national commission presumably are used by individual states in setting their policies. http://www.med.ufl.edu/anatbd/usprograms.html The programs listed for Michigan are all medical schools, but this is not the the case for all the other states. Perhaps by searching for information about storage facilities (not hospitals or medical schools) in other states we could find ideas to impliment the anatomical donee status. Since bureaucrats must be able to understand that cryonics organizations are not cemeteries, but are nonetheless insistant that we be regulated by them, we could distinguish ourselves by qualifying as BOTH anatomical donees AND cemeteries -- thus satisfying the regulators while keeping a free hand to deliver standby care. http://www.clk.k12.mi.us/chs/Gift%20of%20Life/Policyarea.htm This describes the use of the Uniform Anatomical Gift act by the Michigan organ donation group "Gift of Life Agency". If the means by which this is done could be argued to be applicable to cryonics it would be what we want. But it seems as if the cryonicist is donating the body to the future self rather than to another person, so it might be a hard arguement to make. Perhaps a donation to research -- the objective of which is to see if future science will be able to reanimate the corpse? If we could convince them that this is a religious belief we might be able to hide under the umbrella of religion, but otherwise I don't think we could carry this argument too far with most authorities. -- Ben Best Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22452