X-Message-Number: 32750 From: "John de Rivaz" <> Subject: Re: a rationale for organ donation Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2010 09:10:57 +0100 Unfortunately organ donation and cryonics don't mix. It has been suggested before that people could strike some sort of bargain with the authorities: allow my head (or brain) to be cryopreserved, and you can have anything else that is left. There are two objection to this. 1. The authorities don't bargain with citizens or patients. 2. The procedures for cryonics aim to benefit the patient, whereas the protocols for organ or tissue donation aim to benefit the recipient of the parts, and some of these conflict. If someone is an organ donor, once they are declared dead, they become "a remains" - not a person but an object to be cannibalised for spare parts. The person has "gone to heaven". What is left is regarded as being no different to a finger nail clipping, for example. Once anything useful has been removed, what is left after that is disposed of according to funerary custom. If the "funerary custom" happens to be cryonics, then what is left has a chance of reanimation that is as close to zero as one could hope to get. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more writes: [... By also being an organ donor, anyone interested in cryonics would benefit from medically provided heparin, as well as body cooling.] Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32750