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

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