X-Message-Number: 5918
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
From:  (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Virtue of suffering -- right to die in western USA
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 22:26:02 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <> <>

Well, very apropos of the original source of this thread, the court has
declared the right to die in the western USA, so assisted suicide will
be legal until the high court rules otherwise.

However, I strongly advise all cryonics organizations to stay as far away from
the concept as possible for many years to come, until public opinion on this
becomes more settled.


Imageine for a moment how you would feel if there were some "religion"
(say one like the Chruch of Scientology) and this religion promised, as
many religions do, the potential for life after death, and it said your
chances at life after death were better if you killed yourself early,
possibly with their help or the help of an assisted suicide doctor, and
that there were nil unless you paid $50,000 out of your estate or life
assurance in order to join the church.

Suppose that people were buying this and handing over the $50,000 or even
larger sums, and killing themselves early, before their brians deteriorated.
Suppose it was clear that these people would probably have just let
their life run its course if it weren't for the fact that this church 
said that it improved your chances of life after death if you offed yourself
while you still had viable life left.

Would you approve of this?  How would you feel about efforts to prohibit
this practice?

Of course you think the people in this church are quacks, though they of
course claim it's all real.


Cryonics is no church of course, and doesn't even claim the religious
protection that might save the church above from getting its activity banned.
After all, lots of churches promise life after death and suggest that
contributing money to the church ups the chances.

But people in the outside world think the cryonics teams are quacks, so
they would think about pre-mortem cryopreservation pretty much the same thing
you would think if the Church of Scientology were selling something like
what I described above.
-- 
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp.	 
The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,200,000 paid sbscrbrs.)  http://www.clari.net/brad/


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