X-Message-Number: 4655
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #4646 - #4651
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 10:48:07 -0700 (PDT)

Hi!

Re: Gareth Down's 2 questions.

I'm sure that others will answer this one too, but here is my answer. First,
it is PRESENTLY not legal in any state to freeze someone before they have been
declared legally dead. An attempt was made by the Oregon legislature to allow
that; that law is currently tied up in court action by those who don't want 
it to come into force. Naturally as cryonicists we hope that it will, but 
(so far as I personally know) no cryonicists are helping out with that case.
(It's been brought on constitutional grounds).

As for the second question, the more we look at this issue the more fuzzy it
becomes. In many (but unfortunately not in all) cases doctors will declare
someone "dead" not because their brain is dead but because reviving them
will only lead to a few minutes more of "life", after which they will go down
once again. Or keeping them alive will require great effort and expense ..
and other such reasons. In such cases we can say unequivocally that their 
brain is still "alive" when they are declared dead. IF a suspension team is
on the scene, and IF they are allowed to act quickly, then suspension can
begin on the spot and the "aliveness" or "death" of that patient's brain 
will continue during suspension.

However in (unfortunately) many cases things just aren't that simple. There
can easily be delays which are unintentional on the part of all involved.
On top of that, some of the hospital administrators, when informed that a 
suspension team is on the premises, will quite deliberately cause delays.
Doctors themselves cooperate more often than administrators, but sometimes
the doctor doesn't cooperate. Or the person to be suspended has suffered an
accident and his/her heart stops beating without anyone noticing, for either
a short or a long time. If I recall (I haven't personally participated in 
the early stages of a suspension, so I might not be correct) in at least one
case, a suspension team was called well ahead of time, set up in the hospital
and waiting for the doctor to declare death. But that declaration did not come:
the person held on for days. Finally, one day, with none of the suspension 
team having had any sleep for several days, the patient died unattended while
the only suspension team member on watch had inadvertently fell asleep. (No one
was at fault: remember that after several days of sleeplessness,that can 
happen to anyone).

In such cases, some might claim that the brain of the patient was "dead". At
this point we have to be careful because the whole of idea of "death" in this
context is quite wrong. Your friends may not know this, but it remains very
important in such cases: work on reviving people after the "5 minute limit"
has continued for at least 20 years, and even had some success. In the right
hands and with the right equipment, and also the right kind of injury, people
can be revived after as long as 10 minutes. Experiments strongly suggest that
there's a lot more room there still: for instance, KA Hossman managed to 
revive a cat brain after an HOUR of bloodlessness (with no circulation). Lots
of complicated things go on when this happens in real life, and we haven't
yet gotten near that for routine practice. There is good reason to believe
that someday we will.

If you want to define "death" of a brain as presently irreversible, then you're
on very shaky ground. The very next day somebody may push the barrier out a 
few minutes more. I will say, though, that the necessary perfusion with 

cryoprotectant for storage of a suspension patient does become much harder, 
justas does simple revival. At this time, cryonics societies let their members
decide for themselves just how much destruction means that they are permanently
gone. THERE IS NO RATIONALLY AGREED DEFINITION FOR THAT POINT.

Furthermore, cryonicists thinking about what "death" might really mean have
suggested that we decide that a brain is dead if the information it contains
has been permanently destroyed. I don't know of any cryonicist, for instance,
who would want to be frozen if they were totally consumed in a fire. The 
general idea behind this definition, of course, is that we consider someone
dead if no conceivable FUTURE technology could find a way to revive them. I
personally think that this is better than the current definition, but if you 
want to scrutinize this definition TOO you can find problems. "Conceivable"
by whom? Cryonicists, however, are much happier than others about the idea
that our technology for dealing with damaged brains, and even recovering all
the information they once contained, will improve a lot as time passes. So
this definition suggests that we should be frozen even hours after heartbeat
ceased (or artificial circulation was turned off). 

In some cases, people have been frozen and stored without cryoprotectant. This
happened because the circulation problems due to the length of time in which
a patient has lain there with no heartbeat made normal perfusion quite 
impossible. Such a procedure does do a lot of damage to their brain in itself.
In that sense there is even a kernel of truth in what your argumentors say.
However that still does not answer the question of just how much INFORMATION
remains in someone's brain at that point. If it's there, it will clearly be
much harder to get out than in the case of someone frozen right after a 
declaration of death in a hospital. Yet no one can really claim it is gone,
either. If you've made preparations to be frozen, set aside the necessary
money, and such a thing happens to you, would you rather be frozen even if 
your revival isn't guaranteed? Note that your argumentors have not argued that
revival will be forever impossible (ie. the necessary information is gone).
They are only going by current criteria, which will inevitably be faulty.

So far as I know, the basic idea among cryonicists is to be conservative in 
such cases. Sure, we have no idea of how to fix the problem, or even whether
the required information remains. But we are dealing with A HUMAN BEING, and
we might later find (100 years later) that their revival would have been
trivial by that time --- but they were not frozen and now they are gone
forever.

And that key idea, the "death" of a brain, is far more fuzzy and undefined
than your friends seem to think. 

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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