X-Message-Number: 26395 From: "Brian Wowk" <> Subject: Cryonics vs. Burial ?!? Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 00:07:13 -0700 In Cryomsg #26388 Tim Freeman wrote: > If the religion specifies burial practices that are incompatible with > cryonics, there's no room for compromise there. This is not an issue at all. It only becomes an issue because of prejudices reinforced by the unfortunate habit of cryonicists describing cryonics as an "alternative" to burial and cremation. This is highly counterproductive, and ultimately absurd when the true motives and goals of cryonics are considered. Ettinger's idea of bypassing normal medicine by implementing cryonics as an unproven procedure immediately after legal death was certainly brilliant. But cryonicists must learn that any relationship with death ends right there. The *intent* of cryonics is essentially medical: to save lives by stabilizing the condition of patients until more advanced medicine can make a final determination of whether they are really dead or not. Cryonics is therefore morally, ethically, and religously identical to maintaining unconscious patients on chronic life support until their neurological status can be determined with proper certainty. Cryonics is NOT an interment method, mortuary practice, or alternative method of dealing with dead bodies. It is the diametric opposite of interment. There are powerful taboos associated with death and dead bodies wired into the human psyche. That's why there are zombie movies, and why people are creeped out by the whole idea of dead bodies. That's why there is a sharp cultural line between where medicine ends and religion and interment ritual begins. CRYONICS MUST POSITION ITSELF ON THE LIFE SIDE OF THAT LINE. Describing cryonics as an alternative interment method for dead bodies makes cryonics utterly incomprehensible to the worldview of normal human beings. What physician would ever describe a therapeutic coma as an alternative to burial and cremation? What religion would ever measure an emergency medical procedure against its burial practices? None. Burial practices pertain to dead bodies, not therapies done in an effort to keep a body from becoming dead in the first place. Yes, cryonics patients are legally dead. Yes, most people don't draw a distinction between legally dead and really dead. But that's the misconception that cryonicists must work to overcome, not reinforce. Any characterization of cryonics as a competing interment practice or competing religious view only reinforces the false premises upon which cryonics is dismissed in the first place. To all cryonicists who want to declare war on religion: Lay off! Cryonics has no beef with religion. Cryonics is not in conflict with any religion. The field that cryonics really has a beef with is MEDICINE. If someone must be sued, sue some doctor for failure to properly consider the impact of the government's nanomedicine initiatives on contemporary treatment of cardiac arrest. ---Brian Wowk -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.1/28 - Release Date: 6/24/2005 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26395