X-Message-Number: 5868 From: (Brian Wowk) Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension Subject: Re: Virtue of suffering (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley) Date: 3 Mar 96 05:32:13 GMT Message-ID: <> References: <> <> In <> John Sharman <> writes: >> You still don't get it. Cryonics is not assisted suicide because >> patients are legally dead when the procedure begins. They are then promptly >> resuscitated by the cryonics team (with CPR and life support) and thus >> medically alive (but still legally dead!) as the procedure continues. >If you base your argument on so shaky a concept of "death" in the legal >sense, it is you who "don't get it". What gives you the idea that a >medical practitioner's pronouncement or certification of death is >conclusive? Was this sentence really written by John Sharman? :-) >A couple of weeks ago an elderly lady here achieved notoriety for >"waking up" some hours after being pronounced dead in hospital - just as >they were putting her into the mortuary fridge, in fact. According to >you she is now a ghost and if I kill her I do not commit murder. I am >strongly tempted to tell you to "get a life". Now this discussion is getting REALLY interesting. You have repeatedly criticized cryonicists for the folly of freezing "dead" people and believing that they can be "resurrected." I then pointed out that many cryonics patients are in fact biologically alive (by current criteria) at the start of our procedures because we *resuscitate* patients after they are declared legally dead. You now acknowledge the biological weakness (if not irrelevance) of current criteria for pronouncing death, and use that fact as basis for accusing us of murder. You are really begging the question. If we are guilty of murder for intercepting, resuscitating, and freezing a legally dead patient that the hospital was about to send to the morgue, THEN WHY ISN'T THE HOSPITAL GUILTY OF THE SAME CRIME IF THEY DO SEND THAT PATIENT TO THE MORGUE? It seems to me, John, that you are trying to play both sides of the fence. How can you mock us for freezing dead people, and at the same time accuse us of murder? *************************************************************************** Brian Wowk CryoCare Foundation 1-800-TOP-CARE President Your Gateway to the Future http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5868