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%) Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2938