X-Message-Number: 5808
From: Owen Lewis <>
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension,uk.legal
Subject: Re: Virtue of suffering
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 96 11:14:35 GMT
Message-ID: <>

References: <> <> 
<>

In article <>
            "John de Rivaz" writes:

>Cryonicists know that people cannot be revived now. If they can be revived 
>in the future, and we are all agreed that is an *if*, why do you seek to 
>deny this opportunity.
>

Well, I for one seek to deny no such opportuniny. Those who wish to have 
themselves frozen rather than buried or cremated are, in my view, welcome 
to do so. I can also see that, for those of no religious conviction, it 
is possible to believe that the frozen are 'just sleeping' while reality
harshly intervenes in any such belief for those who are, say, cremated.

However, those who wish to believe in that way surely must not expect very
important social and legal accomodations to be made for a belief that
is entirely unrealised. 

>
>Now>>---------------suspension>>------------------->>future
>
>freezing                                  revival into good health
>(revival not possible now)              (now that revival is possible)


OK, in so far as it goes. However, there is no evidence - and the *only* 
satisfactory evidence is a resuscitated frozen stiff - that the current 
freezing technique is sufficiently correct to allow for eventual reversal.

>> >                                   If you keeled over on the street
>> > in cardiac arrest, how would you like bystanders to disdainfully
>> > call you a "corpse" instead of administering CPR?

ISTR that it is a part of the Hegelian dialectic to move an argument forward by
contolling the use of language. At the present time, it serves no good 
purpose for the unconvinced to acquiece in the use of the term 'patient' for
a frozen cadaver.

>To continue the cardiac arrest analogy, suppose some keeled over in the 
>street as described, and some onlookers deliberately prevented ambulance 
>men from collecting him and taking him to hospital, then wouldn't these 
>onlookers face a murder charge?

Not if a qualified medical practitioner had pronounced him dead as indicated 
that the mortuary was the appropriate destination. 

>
>> >         Nobody is a "corpse" until it is formally established that
>> > they are beyond recovery by any accessible technology.

What is an accessible technology varies widely according to time and place.
At the present time 'cryonic suspension' is not an accesssible technology 
since resuscitation has never been performed.

>Even people who don't accept cryonics 
>know that death is a gradual process, not a switching from light to dark.


Anyone ever present during a death would have no difficulty accepting that view.
However, there does often seem to be a definable moment when the spirit (for 
want of a better word) leaves the body and after which the body will run down 
(hair, nails etc.) over a period of time. Hardly a scientific observation,
I know, but not an uncommon human one.

Owen


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5808