X-Message-Number: 22556
From: "Steve Harris" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #22546 Small Price?
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 16:41:24 -0700

> Message #22546
> From: "David Pizer" <>
> Subject: Small price to pay
> Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 08:42:52 -0700

> Cheer up!  What do you have to lose?  There is no penalty
for trying for cryonics.

COMMENT



I wish this was true ala the classic Pascal wager, but it's
not. The penalties are:



1) It costs a lot of money. Something on the order of
$70,000 to $130,000 with Alcor, depending on what you want
done and saved.



There is no use saying that it costs less than this, because
it's paid for by life insurance. On average, that's wrong.
Life insurers aren't fools. They are like casinos, and
you're playing a slot machine with no advantage. You'll pay
(on average) far more than the policy value if you pay for
cryonics this way. It's exactly like buying a house on
mortgage.



In fact, the harder you work on preventive medicine, on
average the more money you will pay over the policy value
for cryonics, if you fund it by life-insurance mechanism.
Yes, you can get lucky and die early <g>. You can get lucky
at a slot machine, too. But on average, odds are against
you, so don't count on it. Cryonics costs what it costs, and
the patient and family foot the bill for both principal and
interest, and generally money isn't free.



Yes, you can cheat, by managing to sign up for insurance
even though you have some extra mortality factor your
company didn't know about, and never discovers. But don't
bet on not being caught, if you have cancer or whatever when
you sign your policy.



Also, in theory you can "cheat" by signing up for life
insurance and then committing suicide after the "no-suicide"
clause runs out, generally in a year or two. But I think
this describes few cryonicists.



Instead, most of us are going to end up making the insurers
money. For example, I myself am well on the way to doing
this after being signed up for 15 years for cryonics on a
whole life policy. By now, I'd be well ahead in payments and
still protected if I'd been for 15 years a disciplined
investor in an index fund or just about any diverse market
instrument, held by a trust to avoid estate tax. Live and
learn.



2) There are social costs. People and institutions may treat
you and your family differently, and probably to your
detriment, since you're doing something odd.



3) There are psychological costs, at least for well-done
cryonics. A good cryonics stand-by is like doing a few days
of do-it-yourself hospital care, followed by bystander CPR,
followed by no casket and no viewing, and also usually no
grave, headstone, or closure. Nobody in their right mind
would want to go through that, unless they felt they had no
other choice (which is the case for many cryonicists, but
not everyone agrees). Some of this extra stress is placed on
family, which (remember) may not believe in cryonics.



And there are stresses on the patient as well, who often has
to die more slowly and publicly. I've seen both families and
(in at least one case) the patient break under the stress,
and decide during a cryonics stand-by that they didn't want
cryonics, because the intangible costs were too high (they
didn't put it in those terms, but that's what happened).



Remember, in most places, when a person dies, all the family
member is required to do is pick up the phone, call a
funeral home, and have a credit card ready. Cryonics is
generally MUCH harder on everybody than that, even if all
the planning has been done ahead of time. Cryonics
"stand-by" puts a high stress on the cryonics organization
that does it, also. No good deed unpunished.



Can all these things be positive, for a family which
believes along with the patient?  Sure. I'm just saying that
doesn't happen as often as we'd like. Cryonics is a terrible
invasion of privacy even for believers, and for
non-believers it's an invasion which is well-nigh
intolerable.



4) The cryonics "death" (deanimation) is more often than not
a more painful, drawn out, and undignified process than it
would be otherwise. Not only are cryonicists denied many
conventional forms of suicide, due to risk of autopsy, but
because of the very public nature of standby, they can be
denied the best "under the table" forms of euthanasia, also.
These "happy death" options are quite common in hospice for
the non-cryonicist; i.e, for *conventional* hospice where
nobody looks too closely. But the more you bother the
hospice people and the more closely you observe them, the
stricter and less liberal about euthanasia-like situations
they get. And that's not good for the cryonics patient.
Death by dehydration has been touted, but in practice it's a
fairly long, and not all *that* pleasant, a way to die. The
best that can be said is that it beats dying of
malnutrition/infection while hydrated by IV's, which used to
be the only option for cancer patients.  A better way to die
is by overdose of morphine when you're septic and headed
that way anyway, but that's harder to do (not impossible,
but harder) in cryonics. And if you want a good suspension,
you don't GET to die in your sleep and be discovered in the
morning, then to be shipped off to the funeral home at a
leisurely pace. Despite what the discount cryonics
organizations may tell you.



In summary, cryonics has all kind of hidden costs, and the
harder you work at doing it right with little brain damage,
the higher these costs are. It's best not to deny them.



SBH

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