X-Message-Number: 2938
Subject: CRYONICS, AIDS and dimentia
From:  (Ben Best)
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 1994 05:10:00 -0400


    My appreciation to Mike Darwin for providing such detailed fact
and analysis of the Jerry White case and the dimentia-before-death
problem. Deciding when to "pull the plug" can be a horrifying dilemma
for any cryonicist passionately attached to life. The temptation to
keep waiting a little longer, and then a little longer (as judgement
progressively erodes) would be all-the-more poignant for anyone who
judges the chances of cryonics working to be 10% or less.

   End life today rather than tomorrow to prevent one day's worth of
deterioration which would only be missed in the unlikely case that the
procedure works?  What is one day's worth of mental deterioration
weighed against a 10% chance of a thousand years of life without the
one day's loss of mental function? This is the stuff of real-life
psychological water-torture, and of gripping fantasy. A novelist or
dramatist could extract a lot of "human interest" from this theme.

   Some factual questions remain unanswered for me, however. Is
dehydration the only form of suicide which can be used to avoid autopsy?
Would any legal jurisdictions require autopsy for suicide by dehydration
under certain circumstances? What brain damage is done by dehydration?
Is cryonic perfusion compromised in a dehydrated patient? Could a
patient get-away with self-infection by virulent microbes?

    Comments appreciated.

            -- Ben Best (ben.best%)

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