X-Message-Number: 27143
References: <>
From: Kennita Watson <>
Subject: Re: life insurance
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 03:09:48 -0700

It may be a non-issue now, but what happens after an
animal is revived, and someone suggests that cryonics
patients ought not be issued death certificates because
they aren't necessarily dead?

Looking ahead, what about when the first person is
revived and restored to health?  What about when
restoration becomes commonplace?  That will certainly
change the actuarial tables.  Then again, so will having
more and more people who are 70 or 80 or 100 with the
bodies and minds of 30-year-olds.

Then there's the matter of the person with trusted
family who takes out a 5 million dollar life insurance
policy on herself, goes out and dies doing something
dangerous, is revived and restored, and walks away with
the cash?  I guess the money would be payment for the
risk that the suspension wouldn't be done well, but I'd
imagine the insurance industry would rather that sort
of gamble not become common -- at least not if the
restored person were eligible to buy a new insurance
policy and play again.

At this point, my mind is getting more twisted around
what happens to the life insurance industry once
cryonics patients can be reliably revived than I can
coherently think about, much less articulate, at this
time of the morning, so I'll leave further speculation
as an exercise for the reader :-) .

Live long and prosper,
Kennita

Robert Ettinger wrote:
> Kennita Watson worries  that life insurance companies may refuse to  
> pay off
> on cryonics  cases, because they might be revived.
>
> Can't happen. They pay off on a  death certificate, and our  
> patients have
> death certificates. And the  insurance companies feel no pain--the  
> actuarial
> statistics are  unchanged.

Then Rudi Hoffman wrote:
> The concern about a "reversal" of a death benefit due to  
> resuscitation of
> our "patients" is a non-issue.
>
> As far as the inscos, and most of the (less well educated) world is
> concerned, a "death certificate" is a permanent and final statement  
> of  condition.

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