X-Message-Number: 5903
From: John Sharman <>
Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Cryonics/Legal/Gerbils
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 96 12:25:13 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <> <>

In article <>  "Brian Wowk" writes:


> In <> John Sharman <>
>  writes:
> 
> >You may take that view; the law (so far as I am aware) does not share
> >it. Do you or do you not accept that all the cryonically frozen people
> >are AS OF NOW legally and medically dead. Please answer this question;
> >don't try to dodge it.
> 
>         I have never dodged these questions (and you are asking TWO
> questions, not one).  Cryonics patients all have death certificates,
> so of course they are legally dead.  But so what?  As you yourself
> have pointed out, legally dead people sometimes do wake up and go
> on to live long healthy lives.  Legal labels make for convenient
> administration, but they do not carry any weight as scientific
> argument.  The appropriate question is not whether cryonics patients
> are legally dead, but rather SHOULD they be classed as such. 

Thanks for the straight answer. Now let me say something that may help
you. The point is not really to do with the word "dead". It is to do
with the way that society regulates itself. Over many hundreds of years
we have built up a complex, self-contradictory, illogical and deeply
wise mass of conventions which we use for this purpose and which we call
"law". Something new comes up. Previously unthought of. May be it fits
comfortably into the existing law. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's in
doubt. There are basically two ways of trying to deal with your position
as purveyor of awkward new ideas. (1) Change the law to accept your
practices - Difficult, slow, expensive, may never happen. (2) Change
your practices so they clearly fall within the law.

So far as I can see, the cryonicists have put 90% of their efforts into
option two and 10% into option (1). My advice is to put much more
effort into option (1). With that in mind, concentrate some funds on
gerbils for a while. You produce a revived gerbil, the legislators will
*have* to react. And you'll start getting support from significant
numbers of people who are as afraid of death as you are.

This may show up some elements of selfishness within your ranks. How
many of you will be prepared to sacrifice your personal freezing funds
and turn the money over to finance research on lower animals etc?

>         As to your second question, most cryonics patients (despite
> being legally dead) are definitely NOT medically dead at the start
> of cryonics procedures.  Several hours ago I posted a lengthy essay
> explaining the various criteria for legal death, and how they differ
> from medical death, and I shall not repeat it here.
> 
>         Now the real question.  Are cryonics patients medically 
> dead at the END of cryonics procedures?  Only a couple of months
> ago I would have said that this question cannot be properly
> answered without knowing *future* criteria for medical death.
> Recently, however, spontaneous and evoked electrical activity
> has been obtained in brain tissue thawed from -196'C.  This
> suggests that cryonics patients cryopreserved under the
> very best conditions today may in fact NOT be medically dead by
> CURRENT criteria applied to comatose patients on life support.

Give me the reference please where I can find the data for and an
informed evaluation of the "spontaneous and evoked electrical activity".
I may then be able to form a view on the validity of the mental leap
from that to "life". I take it that we are agreed that a crystal
wireless receiver is not "alive".

>         I trust I have answered your questions.

You have provided two answers, one of which I accept and the other of
which I wish to examine further.

Thank you.
-- 
Regards,

John Sharman
 +====================================================================+
 |  John Sharman               Internet:    |
 |                             Tel/Fax: +44 (0)1603 452142            |
 +====================================================================+


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