X-Message-Number: 29294
From: 
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 11:48:47 EST
Subject: informed consent

Nobody advocates ambulance or hearse chasing for cryonics organizations,  but 
there is a difference of opinion on the ethics of next of kin choosing  
cryonics for a dying or dead relative who had expressed no interest.
 
I feel strongly that the cryonics-inclined relative has the duty to  "impose" 
his will in this case. One partial analogy might be that of a parent  

imposing his choices on children. The parent knows best, and knows he knows  
best, 
beyond any reasonable doubt, in his own mind--and of course there is no  
reasonably arguable downside for the patient. 
 
How about imposing cryonics on someone who actually refused it? The Jesuits  
were right--the ends do justify the means (except when they don't). My brother 
 Alan was a member of CI, with a contract, almost from the beginning. But in 
his  last illness he became despondent and told his children he didn't want to 
be  frozen. I tried to persuade them, but they insisted on "honoring his  

wishes." He had given informed consent for many years, then uninformed  refusal
in his "second childhood" on his deathbed. His children were probably  honest 
in their motivation, but that changes nothing.
 
R.E. 
<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free 
email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at 
http://www.aol.com.


 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29294