X-Message-Number: 11376
Date: Sat, 06 Mar 1999 00:37:26 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Whom to Reanimate, etc.

I'm glad to see that Chrissie Walton is staying in the signup process and
also is still on this list (despite #11342). Chrissie, you say (#11360):
>
>To: Thomas Donaldson.
>
>>>>just whom should we seriously think of resurrecting, if we have the
>ability to do so. <<
>
>I presumed you  tried to resurrect the people who stated on their sign up
>papers, when they wished to be resurrected. Under what circumstances they
>wished to be resurrected is on their sign up papers, when those conditions
>are met in the centuries ahead, that is when an attempt at resurrection is
>made. If those conditions were not met, then you don't resurrect them. 

Well, I can tell you that the issue you raise is far from an academic one
today, because there are frozen, cryonics patients right now for whom
arrangements were made by relatives, and they DO NOT meet your criteria. In
some cases they left no written documentation (or any other record I have
ever heard of) that they wanted to be frozen at all, or under what
conditions they should be reanimated, etc. So what do we do with these
people, thaw them out?

No, of course not. The presumption that a resurrectible person would NOT
want resurrection unless they specifically so stated, seems to me tragically
misplaced, especially if you consider certain possibilities of the future. I
think we will have the means to analyze the very frozen brains of our
patients, to see how to go about reanimating them in a way they would find
acceptable and even enjoyable. We should certainly be able to heal any
obvious disabilities before returning them to consciousness. This would not
mean a guarantee of eternal happiness, nor, on the other hand, some crude
approach like a heavy application of drugs. But instead, with the knowlege
and means we should have, I think we could make them glad they were back.
Ditto, of course, if there were others too that we could somehow bring back.
With these too we should have considerable means we don't have today, to
know beforehand what to expect in the way of their reactions, so their
awakening would be something they'd be glad happened. Fundamentally, a
person is a type of mechanism. In the future we should have mechanisms far
more sophisticated than any humans we'd be reanimating, to analyze them and
see, as far as possible, that the best things were done for them.

I also found interesting Thomas Donaldson's thumbnail sketch of my career
over the last few years (#11348), during which I have maintained patients in
suspension at Alcor. And it's true that now there is more automation, so
that less time is needed for the "wet end" chores of maintenance, though
some is still required. But there are plenty of other activities, some of
them writing projects, that I am now engaged in.

Mike Perry

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