X-Message-Number: 50
From: Kevin Q. Brown
Subject: Death of Death in Cryonics
Date: 29 Dec 1988

The June 1988 issue of Cryonics presented an article by Brian Wowk titled
"The Death of Death in Cryonics" and responses to that article poured in
for the next three months.  His thesis was that cryonics does not actually
involve freezing dead people; instead it redefines death so that cryonic
suspension saves terminally ill people, not dead people.  This is an important
distinction because, according to Wowk, the failure of cryonicists to present
cryonics as a life-saving technology rather than a death reversal technology
is the source of their major public relations problems.

Cryonics redefines death because death can no longer be determined by
absence of respiration, heart beat, brain waves, or any other metabolic
function.  Instead, Wowk proposes a definition that is more robust in the
face of medical advances:
  "Death: the absolute and irreversible loss of life, which occurs in
  human beings when their brain structure is destroyed."
People who are cryonically suspended while their brain structure is still
(mostly) intact are thus not dead.  Today's physicians and laws are simply
mistaken when they declare a person dead shortly after cessation of some of
the major metabolic functions.

Presenting cryonic suspension as a death reversal process (rather than a
life-saving process) creates public relations problems because many people
immediately get uneasy feelings about religion, souls, Frankenstein, etc.
When cryonics is presented as a life-saving process for very ill (but not
dead) people, the reaction of an audience is much improved.  Steve Bridge
noted (in the Sept. 1988 Cryonics) that "the audience's questions were
different also, with less emphasis on religion and mortality, and more on
technology and feasibility."

Of course, once cryonics patients are seen as alive, not dead, then
(as Eric Drexler pointed out in the Aug. 1988 Cryonics) those people
performing cryonic suspension may be found guilty of practicing medicine
without a license.  That is, however, a small risk to pay for legal recognition
of the (eventual) reversibility of "severe, long-term, whole-body frostbite".

                                       - Kevin Q. Brown
                                       ...{att|clyde|cuae2}!ho4cad!kqb
                                       

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