X-Message-Number: 6254
From:  (Boris Gimbarzevsky)
Newsgroups: bc.politics,sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Limiting the freedom of harmless minority interests
Date: 18 May 1996 06:42:46 GMT
Message-ID: <4njrh6$>
References: <4n8044$> <>

Thanks, John, for posting the relevent section of the BC cemetery and 
funeral services act.  John de Rivaz <> writes:
>"No person shall offer for sale or 
> sell any arrangement for the preservation or storage of human remains
> based on cryonics, irradiation or any other means of preservation or
> storage, by whatever name called, that is offered or sold on the 
> expectation of the resuscitation of human remains at a future time."

I played around with a CDROM of BC statutes (up to 1994) obtained from 
a lawyer friend today and found that there appears to be a contradiction
between the above section of the cemetery act (BCCA) and the BC Human 
Tissue Donor Act (BCHTDA).  In BCCA, human remains are defined as:
		"human remains" means a dead human body in any stage of 
		 decomposition, but does not include cremated remains;

Before a person can serve as an organ donor, they must be pronounced 
dead.  Defining death is a tricky business.  Brain death is favored by 
some people, and this test requires that the individual have no cortical 
activity, and furthermore have no brainstem reflexes, or spontaneous 
respiratory activity.  Seems simple enough, except a large enough dose 
of barbiturates will put any person into this state.  Intubate them, 
ventilate them, and they recover - take them off the ventilator in their 
"brain dead" state, and they're just as dead as any stiff one choses from 
the morgue to compare them with.

Pronouncement of death is a medical decision.  In certain cases, it means 
deciding at some point during a cardiac arrest that one isn't going to 
benefit the person by further aggressive treatment.  It is quite possible 
that by persisting longer one could manage to get the person to recover, 
or, more likely, to get them into a brain-dead vegetative state where 
they may appear to be alive for years.

This gray area is totally ignored by the BCCA - if a person collapses 
outside a hospital, and is not found by anyone for a few hours, they are 
dead, and thus "human remains".  If they arrest on a hospital ward, they 
are potential "human remains" depending on the skill and persistance of 
the arrest team who respond to the patients "dying".  They may also be 
potential donors under the BCHTDA.

Hypothermic individuals are particularly interesting in this regard - 
children have been revived after hours of underwater submersion in cold 
water.  My record for continuing CPR on an otherwise clinically dead 
individual is 2.5 hours on a person who presented in a hypothermic cardiac
arrest to the emergency department of a Vancouver hospital.  Quite a 
vigorous argument ensued among participants during this prolonged 
recussitation, after which he was revived, transferred to the ICU, and
eventually discharged from the hospital to continue his career as a 
successful skid-row alcoholic.  Presumably had he been deliberately cooled
to this state, which prolonged his life, this would have been a violation 
of the BCCA.  Regardless of the appropriateness of this aggressive 
medical management, for which I assume responsibility, it has served to 
impress upon me the arbitrary nature whereby one decides if one is 
legally alive or dead.  One has ample time to think about this issue 
while performing CPR on an individual while ICU nurses are urging me to 
declare the patient dead so this futile intervention can stop.

It is also clear that the section of the BCCA which prohibits cryonics is 
in conflict with another part of the same act, namely:
  53.	Subject to the Human Tissue Gift Act, a written preference by a 
  person as stated in a will, a preneed cemetery services plan or a 
  prearranged funeral services plan respecting the disposition of the 
  human remains of that person is binding on the person who under section
  51 has the right to control the disposition of the human remains except 
  where compliance with that preference would be unreasonable or 
  impracticable or would cause hardship.

People are allowed to donate their bodies to medical schools, for use in 
research, or to have their remains disposed of in a manner consistent 
with their religious beliefs.  As freedom of religion is protected by the 
Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms, it is likely that a person who 
believed in future reincarnation through cryopreservation, the persons 
religious belief would supersede that of an assinine section of the BCCA.

One way of bringing this section of the BCCA into the public eye would be 
to charge companies which are involved in manufacturing equipment to 
preserve human organs for transplant using cold as one of the means.  The 
embarassment of having PORT jets impounded in BC and the kidneys and 
livers that are being flown from BC donors to save lives throughout N. 
America would likely be enough to abolish this unbelievably assinine 
section of BC legislation.  As long as this section of the legislation 
exists, BC will be seen as a hopelessly anachronistic backwater in the 
area of medical technology.  I welcome any efforts by cryonics supporters 
to embarass the BC government in eliminating this legal abomination.

Boris Gimbarzevsky


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