X-Message-Number: 3739
Date: 24 Jan 95 17:50:51 EST
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: CRYONICS In and out with Dave

Dave Cosenza writes:

> but their personal life and any 
>psychological problems they may have are seldom relevant to those histories,
>and IMO should be excluded from any such discussions on the net or any other
>public forum! 

You have obviously not read many medical case histories and/or seen the kind of
records an internist or GP makes (i.e., charts) about PERSONAL issues,
PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES, and other "psychological problems: this is routine,
universally practiced and recognized to be an important issue in the patient's
care.  Ditto interpreting case histories.  And, much more to the point, such
behaviors DO directly impact on cryonics, care of cryonics patients AND their
cryopreservation care.  Ending your life by suicide and becoming an ME's case
CERTAINLY has had an impact on every case in cryonics where I know it to have
happened.  To exclude discussion of personal life, family dynamics, and
psychological history would: a) be completely out of keeping with the tradition
and practice of medicine *since Hippocrates* and b) would seriously interfere
with correct interpretation and improvment in patient care.

As to your second assertion:

>I was talking about Margaret
>Bradshaw's problem. It's pretty tacky to say that brilliant, intelligent and
>creative people are often depressed and using Prozac, and then to follow 
>that up by saying oh and by the way, I'm depressed and use Prozac. By those
>standards, I'd be another DaVinci! :-)

This is just your usual nasty crap Dave.  Any thinking person will realize that
not ALL depressed people are brilliant and the fact that I suffer from
depression doesn't make me brilliant.  In fact, I've been to support groups for
depressives and manic depressives and there are (believe me) an awful lot of

average or even downright stupid depressed people.  You (and others) should feel
free to out me in whatever catergory (re: intelligence, brilliance, etc.) that
you want.  As far as my medical history goes, just consider me anither person

with a pretty common problem shared by about 20 million other Americans; most of
whom are not geniuses or "brilliant"either.  And, since YOU rauise the issue, I
will be quite forthcoming in saying that since I began experiencing major

depressive episodes my productivity has been eroded and my (subjective ) view is
that my performance is not as good.  People with problems, particularly serious
medical problems are more often hurt than helped by them (although there are
exceptions.

And finally, I would say that of the really brilliant mentally ill people I've
known who were star performers, most were manic depressives.  I do not recall
giving myself that label.

The purpose of my discussion and of opening this thread was to note that two
driven, bright people who I cared a great deal about have comitted suicide
within a year or less of being primary caretakers for cryonics patients.  The
loss of one of these people left me nearly suicidially depressed for weeks
because I cxared about her so much and enjoyed mt frequent interactions with
her.  I would like to see this problem identified early, AND appropriate
intervention put in place to stop it.  That was clearly the intent of my
message.  Further, as Kevin Brown was kind enough to point out, it turns out
that this problem is a serious one for family members providing terminal care
for noncryonics patiants, and that they have an increased incidents of
depression and suicide too.

Your post shows nicely (as others have commented) the degree to which you are
twisted up and full hate; seeing demons where none exist. And also that, as you
indirectly indicate, you are no Da Vinci.

Mike Darwin

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