X-Message-Number: 514
From:  (Ben Best)
Date: 26 Oct 91 (17:27)
Subject: bureaucrats and cryonics

   Nearly a month ago I wrote a letter to Allen Lopp concerning the
strategy cryonicists should use when dealing with bureaucrats. I would
not want this letter printed in a cryonics magazine, but because I want
my views circulated among cryonicists, CRYONET seems like a good place
to reprint it:

    "Dear Allen,

       "I generally support the work you have been doing to improve the
legal climate in California with respect to cryonics. However, I was
quite distressed to read that you gave a copy of my article on the
illegality of cryonics in British Columbia to Jillian Kong.

      "The article is not written in terms that are friendly to
bureaucrats -- I clearly express my disdain. Also, in the war for the
freedom to practice cryonics, as in all wars, intelligence is a very
valuable commodity. I researched my piece as an intelligence-gathering
operation for cryonicists. I listed phone numbers and addresses so we
would know who to hassle, who to hold responsible and who to try to
work-with (and how).

    "I acknowledge that the struggle for cryonics freedom is not
necessarily an adversarial contest against the bureaucrats. To some
extent there is or must be cooperation with legislators and bureaucrats
if cryonics is to be acknowledged as a legal practice. But I know
full-well that legislators and bureaucrats are not very rational and/or
have interests which could be contrary to ours. Specifically, legal
precedent counts for a great deal -- even in other jurisdictions. To
inform California legislators that cryonics is illegal in British
Columbia will impress them with the idea that cryonics SHOULD be
illegal, more than our protests that is should not will dissuade them
(they respect their peers). Moreover, my article will give California
bureaucrats contact-information that will make it easy to confer-with
and perhaps mutually-support their British Columbia brethren.

    "Bureaucrats are lemmings. To know that cryonics is illegal
elsewhere emboldens them to make cryonics illegal in their own
jurisdictions. The bureaucrats in British Columbia were shocked to
learn (and actually did not believe me when I said), that BC is the
only jurisdiction in the world in which cryonics is explicitly illegal.
I was told that in the event of legislative review, consultation would
be made with bureaucrats in other jurisdictions (other Canadian
Provinces, primarily). I was afraid that this might pollute the thinking
of bureaucrats in other Provinces -- who are currently unconscious about
cryonics, for the most part. I have been delaying appealing the cryonics
issue in British Columbia until the California DHS case is resolved.

    "Once again, I don't mean this missive as an attack on you. Your
action has provoked me to express things I had not formerly expressed.
I hope you will be persuaded by my point of view so that we can work
together in the future.
                            "Sincerely, Ben Best"

    I could raise similar issues about the FDA in the US and the
Food&Drug authorities in Canada. If something is made illegal in the US,
Canadian bureaucrats fall all-over themselves in proving their concern
for the "public good" by implimenting fascist regulations in excess of
those in the US. In Canada, the amino acids arginine and ornithine are
illegal when sold alone, but products combining the two are legal.

    The US at least has a history of freedom, and a Bill of Rights to
defend individual liberties. The Canadian Bill of Rights shows little
concern for individual liberty, but focuses on welfare rights and
ethnic rights. Canadians raise Holy Hell if an ethnic group is offended,
but individuals can be shoved-around with impunity. The Canadian
Tradition is one in which the Colonial Authorities (historically,
bureaucrats from the British Empire) are a remote and unquestioned
power. To question smacks of unpatriotic disloyalty and Americanism
(Canadian nationalist sentiment can be summed-up in a word:
anti-Americanism). This kind of thinking had a lot to do with
bureaucrats taking it upon themselves to make cryonics illegal in BC.

                    -- Ben Best ()
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