X-Message-Number: 6827 Date: Sat, 31 Aug 96 10:32:21 From: Dave Pizer <> Subject: Pizer replies to Platt Pizer Replies to Platt I hate to drag this on, but I think Charles' posting demands clarification. Dave Pizer Charles posts: > Message #6822 > Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 12:07:41 -0400 (EDT) > From: Charles Platt <> > Subject: Loss vs. Blame > > Keith Henson writes about sense of loss. I felt a strong sense of loss > myself not so long ago, when my own father died after refusing to be > frozen. I suppose I could have blamed the nursing home for advising him > against cryonics, or his best friend who thought cryonics was a foolish > waste of money, or myself for not trying harder to change my father's mind > ... but the fact is, the real culprit was my father himself. He simply DID > NOT WANT IT, just as most people in the world simply DO NOT WANT IT and > prefer permanent death, for reasons that seem painful and sad to us. This is sad about your father. I had a similar experience with my mother. But your father and my mother's case are not similar to Tim Leary's. Tim was signed up to be frozen with Alcor for about 5 years. During that time, Tim told everyone that he wanted to be frozen. He also went on TV, radio and other media and told the world he wanted to be frozen. For 5 years Tim told the world, "When I die, I want to be frozen." Then Tim contracted a terminal disease. During that time, CryoCare was forming. CryoCare was making a strong effort to talk Alcor members into switching, promising better suspensions. I have been told that Steve Harris was Tim Leary's doctor and that Steve was one of the main persons that influenced Tim to switch to CryoCare. (And I have no reason to doubt that Steve had good intentions.) Tim did not want to give up Alcor easliy. For a while Tim was wearing an Alcor bracelet and a CryoCare bracelet. Eventually Tim only wore a CryoCare bracelet. During the year and a half that Tim was a CryoCare member something happened to reverse the five years of Tim's cryonics activism. I do not know exactly what happened. I don't think we ever will. There are 2 different stories I have heard. One is that Tim just changed his mind. According to some accounts he was getting senile--perhaps that was a factor. The other is that some CryoCare members pissed off a dying man to where he would rather give up any chance of life than continue to deal with them. Which one is true? Or was there some truth to both? The Tim Leary debate was about over until some CryoCare members posted funny stories about the matter. I am NOT trying to flame anyone, but please don't try to make this tragedy seem humorous. > > It is hard to blame people we care for when they make life/death decisions > that offend our feelings of right and wrong. In my opinion it seems hard for you to accept the possibility that you made some errors that led to a long-time cryonicist getting burned up. >Several people were reluctant > to blame the AIDS patient in Florida whom Steve Harris writes about; they > would rather blame Steve. Others find it impossible to blame Timothy > Leary; they would rather blame me and Mike Darwin. I don't understand this. Are you blaming Tim? >Still others seem > incapable of blaming Jack Kevorkian's patients for wanting to kill > themselves; they would rather blame Kevorkian for killing them. There is a > unifying thread here: a perception of the patient as a victim who is not > competent to make decisions and is thus exempt from blame. Charles, if Tim Leary was competent as I think you are implying, what happened from the time he left Alcor that caused him to change his mind about being suspended? > > Well, we may blame care-givers if they supply substandard care; but where > *decisions* are concerned, if the patient is calm, sane, rational, and > independently minded, the patient must take the ultimate responsibility > for deciding how (s)he wishes to die. > I note that friends of Leary in the cryonics community tried hard to > persuade him to opt for being frozen, near the end. If we are going to > start blaming people for their actions, logically we should blame those > friends for being so ineffectual. Again, I ask, What influenced Tim Leary to change his mind after he left Alcor? > This of course seems unreasonable and unfair--just as it is unreasonable > and unfair to accuse me of "poisoning Leary's mind" against cryonics (a > concept that seems ludicrous at best). I suggest it is more rational to > agree that Timothy Leary was not a malleable person; he simply did not > want to be frozen, and the people around him were no more able to change > his mind on this topic than they were able to persuade him to stop killing > himself by slow starvation. I knew Tim Leary. He told me on several occassions that he did want to be frozen. He told that to the whole world. > --Charles Platt, speaking for myself not CryoCare Dave Pizer Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6827