X-Message-Number: 16520 Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 12:08:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: Swayze and Uninsurability The case of Mr. Swayze is very difficult, I think, because there is such a degree of hardship and it rouses so much empathy. If someone with AIDS came to us and said, "I am desperate to be cryopreserved, but I am uninsurable," a cryonics organization might respond, "We're really sorry, but you should have made your cryonics arrangements before you engaged in risky sexual activity. We cannot start giving our services away, because it weakens the organization, which exists to protect people who were provident and did make advance arrangements." But quadriplegia is such a frightening condition, which we can easily imagine happening to us (in a car crash, for instance); whereas AIDS, despite efforts of activists to enlighten everyone, is still perceived as something that happens to "other people." This is no longer correct, but still, that seems to be the public perception. Consequently it seems to me there is a powerful emotional component at work here. You would not find this in a conventional business (such as insurance). The business would simply say "No way!" and leave it at that. This leads me again to the fact that cryonics is not run like a business. We really need to be clear about what we're doing. If we are guided partly by compassion, organizational guidelines should be revised to reflect this, so that there is an existing set of principles to apply to "charity cases," and all members of an organization are fully informed. If our sole concern is fiscal integrity, we need to learn how to say no without feeling guilty. When I was given the task of picking a winner for the "Omni Immortality Contest" (which was offering free membership and free cryopreservation), I received three essays from people who were dying and were uninsurable, and one especially moving essay from a man whose wife was dying, and he wanted to donate his "free cryopreservation" to her. This put me in a position which troubled me for months afterward. My job was to pick the "best" essay. But if I ignored people's suffering, what did that make me? I tried to reassure myself by reminding myself that cryonics offers only a chance at future life, not a guarantee. In the end I picked an essay written by a person who had been in a severe car accident, leaving him scarred and in constant pain. He was hoping that in the future, his pain could be eradicated with a new body. Thus, I tried to salvage my conscience by choosing someone who was in genuine need. And what happened? He procrastinated for more than a year, about signing up, even though everything was free. And after he became an Alcor member--he disappeared! No forwarding address. Evidently in his case, we couldn't even give cryonics away. These are just some of the complexities and paradoxes to which we open ourselves, when we start making decisions on the basis of emotional factors as well as business factors. --CP Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16520