X-Message-Number: 7470
Date: 09 Jan 97 19:36:48 EST
From: Michael Darwin <>
Subject: Re: Suicide and cryonics

Brad,

Thanks for copying me on your reply.  I think we are "missing each others'"
points.  You "agree" with me that active euthanasia should be legal.  Actually,
I don't really think it should be "legal" despite my libertarian ideals.  I
don't really know WHAT I would do if I was sitting on the Supreme Court right
now, with the case that sits before it now in front of me.  I don't  LIKE
euthanasia.  However, I feel about it like Justice Frankfurter felt about
pornography:  "I can't tell you the criteria for thecases when it is OK to do,
but I know 'em when I see 'em."  This is a useless statement since it tells you
nothing about what should or shouldn't be prohibited from an objective
standpoint.

You say you think active euthanasia should be legal but that:

a) it is not likely to become so soon (I agree it is not likely it will become
legal soon!)
b) it will be very bad for cryonics if cryonics organizations and/or patients
are seen to be killing themselves to improve their chances of a good
cryopreservation. (Here I agree too!)

So, where does that leave us?  Well, that is where we seem to be sailing past
one another.  Brad, the fact is people have killed themselves to get
cryopreserved under good conditions.  Actively or passively doesn't really
matter from a PR standpoint because the passive method (deliberate, documented
dehydration and starvation) is so AWFUL and PR negative that it can be
media-manipulated to be WORSE than a simple lethal injection or just giving
anesthesia and starting the process.  Some cryonics organizations (including
yours) have records that look like something out of Auschwitz or Treblinka; no
one would believe this was the USA in the last half of the 20th Century!

You are a media savvy guy since you own/run Clarinet.  The horrors I've seen
transcend the law.  In fact, I did a straw poll of 21 ME's districts in half a
dozen states about two years ago and I asked them the following question:

"If someone in your jurisdiction who was dying of cancer with a projected

remaining lifespan of three months deliberately starved/dehydrated themselves to
death in order to be cryopreserved (cryonically frozen) under better conditions
how you treat such a case from a medicolegal standpoint?"

Over half responded that they would consider it an ME's case and would pursue a
full post mortem to determine staging of illness, objective nature of illness,
and evidence of lack of competency (CNS lesions or neoplasms) which might make
the case a homicide.

About 40% said they would not only do a post mortem, but would ask the DA to
investigate the circumstances of the case (including the cryonics organization)
with an eye towards prosecution for some kind of homicide.  Several said they
would recommend the DA consider Capital Murder.


I note that one of the things that really sent the Coroner ballistic in the Dora
Kent case was the withdrawl of food and fluid, and there were statements to the
media at the time that she was "starved for four days before her death."  Keep
in mind in her case this was totally medically appropriate (PVS, bed sores,
advanced age) and any reasonable cross section of physicians in the US today
would agree!


So, it is NOT (in my mind) a question of avoiding this problem.  You can't avoid
it.  You won't avoid it.  In fact, the more seriously people take cryonics, the
more they will be inclined to take the risks involved.  What you have here is
the classic problem of the interests of the individual conflicting with the
interest of the group.  That always sucks, and it is one of the major problems
of civilization.

So, how is it resolved?  Well, in two basic ways: 

1) Society changes its values all by itself with no fuss and the problem goes
away. (Yup, this really does happen).

2) A bloody horrible mess ensues and somebody or some group has to suffer
terribly.  Dr. Jack may be having a good time, and so may have John Brown (of
Harper's Ferry).  But Brown ended up dead and "THEY"aren't done with Dr. Jack
yet.


Slavery is a classic example of a moral mess and a terrible political conundrum.
Slavery would probably have gone away in a generation or two more without the
Civil War and the resultant corrosion of State's rights, not to mention the
unspeakable loss of life and limb.  This, of course, may be reflected on with
philosophical detachment unless you happen to be a slave at the time.  All the

options sucked.  This is why I have a big period lithograph of a haunted looking
Abraham Lincoln hanging over my fireplace.

So what's the bottom line?  Cryonics is a pricey item, like free speech (if
you're Larry Flynt) or freedom in general.  You and I apparently have different
notions over a) what that price is, and b) who, how, and when it will be paid.

My position is that I will not engage in active euthanasia of cryopatients.
However, I won't interfere with it or report it, either, should I trip right
over it.  I do however, encourage people not to leave it laying out for me to
trip over.  But, I don't imagine that will always be possible. 

But, again and again we come to the FACT that realizing that active and passive
euthanasia are bad for cryonics doesn't mean a heck of a lot if that's all you
realize.  And efforts by cryonics organizations to ignore or supress this
behavior in members, clients or patients are doomed to failure.  In fact, such
efforts will only likely increase the odds that things will go very badly with

some damn fool or desperate soul botching things up in an unimagineably bad way.

Since you are most assuredly NOT going to STOP this behavior, you had better
start thinking about constructive ways to DEAL WITH IT.  

And in any event, be prepared to pay a high price for cryonics.  It is a FAR
costlier item that you ever imagined possible.  I once thought I could get it
for $8,500 cash! But then, I was 13 years old at the time.

My personal conclusion is that the lowest price for medical time travel will be
achieved through the path of developing medical suspended animation.  I still
think people are going to suffer horribly for even for doing this.  But I think
the suffering will be less and the price lower.  In the meantime, ignorig the
very real plight and the associated actions of desperate cryonics patients is
going to do no one any good.

In a few short words: DEAL WITH IT NOW, PROSPECTIVELY AND INTELLIGENTLY.

Mike Darwin


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