X-Message-Number: 581
Date: 16 Dec 91 13:49:55 EST
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics: #577

Dear Graham:
When we speak of revival most of us consider revival to be a minimum of
100 years away. Many consider 100 years an underestimate and would 
suggest more like 200 years or sometimes even 300. 

Even 100 years from now most of CURRENT laws concerning death etc will
have changed. This change will not be because lawyers decided on a 
change, but because it was forced by political necessity. One revived
patient may change things very little: millions of people who plan to
be suspended, and thousands who have been suspended and then revived,
will cause a change. Most of the issues you have raised will then become
quite quite irrelevant.

Current planning by cryonicists assumes that we will NOT have any right
to our former property. We also assume that life will be hard for a while
after revival. I cannot imagine how a government or people faced with a
real live human being who had formerly "died", was suspended, and then was
revived would deny claim that this person was still "dead". However even
in that case the purpose of a cryonics society is to protect its members,
whether suspended or not. If that protection involves either legal or
quasi-legal actions, then it will be carried out. And as for illegal 
actions (remembering that other countries and times have had laws we now
consider barbaric and well worth violating) I would expect that, too ---
even if not institutionalized.

I hope that this comments will put your questions in a different perspect-
ive.			Thomas Donaldson

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