X-Message-Number: 7796
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7782 - #7790
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 23:10:13 -0800 (PST)

Hi!

Re Pizer's article: Wow!

He certainly states the matter without compromise. 

I would add this: I've said before that we should consider our suspension 
patients either not dead at all, or people for whom the question of whether or
not they remain alive is yet unanswered. It is not biological death that 
should concern us (whatever that may mean). It is the loss of that information
in a patient's brain which makes that patient who he or she was. And so long as
his/her brain remains more or less intact, even including damage to cell
membranes, we have a prospect of recovering that information.

It is that information which is our Soul. And it fits most of the notions about
souls: it is not material, for instance. It characterizes each one of us, and
contains not only information in the sense of our memories but our feelings
and responses too. The one point on which it differs is that we do not yet
have a way to preserve it separately from our body.

And finally, any Christian does have a DUTY before God to preserve him or
herself as long as possible. If we are right, and he/she simply is NOT 
dead when the doctors of 1997 declare them to be so, then that duty extends
to cryonics. It's not our purpose to freeze dead people but to freeze those
who remain alive but who would otherwise die.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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