X-Message-Number: 1081 Date: 30 Jul 92 15:12:29 EDT From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS Obligations to Loved Ones in Suspension --------------------------------------- I have yet another question for people on the net. Suppose that a man's wife is placed in suspension at a relatively early age--say, 40. Suppose that he is a cryonicist himself, and he believes that she is not dead in the usual sense. He looks forward to a time when the two of them will emerge from suspension and enjoy a new life in the future together. Mike Darwin has pointed out that in a case like this, suspension provides no emotional closure. The man has the pleasure of knowing that is wife is not truly dead, but this means that the bond is still there and he has no way to let go, as he would have if his wife was truly dead and gone. The man in my example must now feel ambivalent about ever remarrying. If he does, and his new wife signs up to be frozen, he risks a situation where he, and she, and his first wife will all be revived together. In that case, his first wife might feel horribly betrayed. It seems to me that emotional questions like this are much more disturbing than legal questions (such as whether a frozen patient still has the right to own assets). It's all very well to look only at the life/death issue, and say that more life is always better than less life. This skips over some difficult questions which we have seldom had to deal with, because there have been relatively few suspensions and most suspendees have been elderly. In the future we may see more cases where a relatively young spouse is left alive, not quite free from the loved one who is frozen. What will we be able to say to these people, to make their situation easier? --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1081