X-Message-Number: 2272
From:	Ben Best <>
Date:	Wed, 19 May 1993 20:00:00 -0400
Subject: CRYONICS: may cdn events


               MAY 1993 CANADIAN CRYONICS EVENTS

     Electons were held on the afternoon of Sunday, May 16 for new
officers of the Cryonics Society of Canada. The new officers are:

                     President -- Ben Best
                Vice President -- Doug Quinn
                     Treasurer -- Bruce Waugh
                     Secretary -- Scott Maynard

     Ten people came to the Cryonics Dinner on the evening of May 16th.
Issues discussed were fairly wide-ranging. One fellow said that he would
prefer certain death to the "neuro" option. He seemed to feel that
future science would never be able to re-create his current body and
that his quality of life without his original body would be
unacceptable. Another person challenged my desire for extended life
at all costs by asking (to paraphrase) how long I would live if I had
to kill one child per day to stay alive. I attempted to protest
incomplete moral responsibility in that scenario, and denied that
any condition of life cannot ultimately be transcended, but
acknowledged that I find the question deeply disturbing.

    The lecture on May 19th to the Toronto "Meaning and Reality"
Group was intended to justify the material basis of the mind in the
brain as a prelude to a lecture on cryonics. The "prelude" consumed
so much of the evening, that it was decided that an entirely separate
presentation specifically on cryonics would be made in September. Many
members of the group displayed a decidedly anti-materialist bias,
although this bias did not seem conventionally religious. One fellow
firmly held that volition (free will) is so universally and intuitively
obvious that personal identity cannot possibly be material. Another
fellow, in justifying the effects of drugs and brain lesions on the
mind, said that the brain is like a transmitter/receiver of spiritual
information, that cannot function effectively when it is impaired.
When the question was raised concerning where to look amongst the
brain's neurons, synapses and glial cells for transmitter/receiver
equipment, the answer was a flat "we don't know yet".

           -- Ben Best (ben.best%)
--
CRS Online - Toronto, Ontario
416-213-6002/213-6003

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