X-Message-Number: 32384
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:29:27 -0800 (PST)
From: 
Subject: cryonics terminology


I received one "non-supportive" email from an influencial cryonics proponent 
regarding my proposed change in cryonics terminology to delete all mention of 
fraudulent terms such as patient or person in reference to stored corpses. The 
sender stated that the "eyes of the law are irrelevant".


Below is an extract from my reply, which I hope will serve as a warning to 
cryonics organizations that are still using such potentially dangerous 
terminology.


"It was the law which shut down CI for awhile. CI is regulated as a respository 
only for corpses, yet CI continues to use terms that imply it is violating the 
law. CI has been shut down by the law in the past, and will again when at some 
point in the future when the local law is more strictly enforced. Using terms 
that are not in the dictionary elminates some of this risk. Terms like 
"suspendee", my own proposed "cryonaut", and "preservee" as suggested elsewhere 
all possess the advantage of being low risk terms because they are not in the 
dictionary. They would mean the same to members of the cryonics movement, as 
"patient" would, but are not in technical violation of the law. As you know, the
dictionary states that "patient" can only refer to live human bodies and not to
corpses. This dictionary reference can be used by any unsympathetic bureaucrat 
to shut down both CI and Alcor at any time. For institutions that may have to 
survive hundreds or even thousands of years to fulfill their purpose, taking 
needless risks such as using words like "patient" is imprudent."

>From CI's website:

[Cryonicists make best efforts to minimize tissue deterioration to maximize the 
future potential for life. For this reason, cryonicists refer to people who have
been cryopreserved as patients, rather than as corpses.]

>From Alcor's website:

[The cryopreservation phase of cryonics will not be reversible for a very long 
time. But this still does not mean cryonics patients are dead.]


According to a court ruling in the state of Michigan a patient can not be a 
corpse, and thus technically CI is guiltly of making a fraudulent claim. Any 
unsympathetic bureaucrat could take CI to court and win the lawsuit.
Snipped from the web>

[A ruling however by the Michigan Court of Appeals determined that "because a 
dead body is not a person, it is not protected under a statute that protects 
patient abuse in nursing homes."]

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