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/

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