X-Message-Number: 12401
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 16:03:53 -0700
From: Jeff Davis <>
Subject: It's NOT suicide

 Friends,

     Recent posts concerning pre-mortem suspension and related matters have
repeatedly involved the use of the word "suicide", and in so doing have
tended to suggest that cryonic suspension is in some sense a form of suicide.

   HELLO!!!  Time to get a clue, boys and girls!

   Find another term.   Programmed deanimation.  Pre-mortem suspension.
Cryo-supression of biochemical metabolism.  Low-temperature interruption of
cellular homeostasis.  Chemo-structural freeze-lock.  Whatever works for you.

   But NOT suicide.  Even post-mortem suspension is "mortem" at all only
because legal and medical groups establish the "authoritative" definition
of death.  As almost all readers of this list should know, at the moment of
declaration of death and for some indeterminate period  thereafter, the
"authoritative" definition of death--which definition carries with it a
sense of irrevocable finality--is not death at all, but rather the
condition more precisely to be described as the-state-wherein-we(meaning
the medical establisment)-can't-do-anything-more-to-make-you-healthy-again,
ie, "beyond help".

   Beyond whose help?  Beyond the medical establishment's help?  Yes.
Beyond all help?  No.

    Cryonic suspension, PARTICULARLY a deliberate, planned, and controlled
pre-mortem suspension, is, by intention, and by the possibility (in my view
the near certainty) of a successful outcome, the very antithesis of suicide.

    So if you find yourself involved in a discussion about
physician-assisted suicide, or insurance/suicide issues, take a moment to
make it clear that, in stark contrast to suicide's despair, desperation,
and tragic loss, cryonics is a pro-actively life-affirming and life-saving
strategy of dynamic optimism.

   

 
			Best, Jeff Davis

	   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
					Ray Charles				

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12401