X-Message-Number: 6406
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Australian Law + Blade Runner Cryonics
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 17:18:37 +1000 (EST)

Two items of interest: 

Wrt the Australian euthanasia laws, there's a nice page of pointers at
http://netguide.aust.com/daily/features/feat28june96.html - including
pointers to the latest details. As I understand from a radio story
last night, the Australian federal government, on the express instructions
of the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, plans to attempt to scupper
the NT laws in two ways. The first is in the courts by suggesting that
making such a law is beyond the Northern Territory's brief, as the NT is
not actually an Australian state - it didn't exist prior to the Australian
federation, and was only created as an autonomous legislature by the 
Australian government (though quite a long time ago ...) as a matter of
expedience. I've heard, though IANAL, that this challenge is not very 
likely to succeed.

The second, much more controversial, spoiling method is to instruct the
commonwealth administrator (forget his exact title, sorry) not to enact
the law. This would be controversial in that this administrator would
then have conflicting instructions from his boss, the commonwealth, and
from his parliament, the NT parliament. According to the radio report I
heard there is nothing in the administrator's role to dictate just who
he should listen to under such circumstances - a real constitutional crisis.

***

On a totally unrelated note, I've been reading the latest "Making of Blade
Runner" book, "Future Noir" by Paul M. Sammon. For a diehard BR fan like myself
(I've got credits in the BR FAQ) this makes spellbinding reading, but I was
surprised to find that it has some relevance here.

Perhaps a few people will be aware that some of the original BR scripts
and production sketches called for a "CryoCrypt" in which, as an oblique
reference to Philip K. Dick's marvellous novel "Ubik" - surely a
must-read for any cryonicist - the *real* Eldon Tyrell would remain safe
while a replicant Eldon Tyrell risked the wrath of Roy Batty. Of course,
like quite a few early BR concepts, this one didn't make it into any
version of the final movie.

But I was fascinated to read that the original actor approached to play
Deckard, Dustin Hoffman, was the origin of this whole concept, and that
*BOTH* Hoffman and the movie's director, Ridley Scott, were (C 1981) big
fans of "cryogenics" (sic).

I was wondering whether Hoffman or Scott are signed up? If so I imagine
they've got confidentiality agreements, so suspension providers should not
regard this as a query. However, if they're not, they might make excellent
prospects for those who are still looking for a cryonics white knight.

--

| mailto:       |         Give away what you don't need.        |

| http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/ |                                               |


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