X-Message-Number: 17686
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 00:45:51 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Suspendees and Single Cells

>Message #17680
>From:  (Rick Potvin)
>Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 22:37:10 -0700 (MST)
>Subject: Human rights for suspendees.
>
>The human rights of cryonic suspendees may best be protected within a
>philosophical framework of Classical Humanism. This entails working to
>protect the human rights of fertilized human ova within the same
>framework, not to mention working to abolish human abortion at any
>stage.
>http://network54.com/forum/message?forumid=95192&messageid=1001988680

At this website I found:

"...it is not realized potential that makes the man; rather , the potential 
already in itself-- still quite undeveloped, in the fertilized embryo cells , "

On that basis, however, you might as well say that an ununited sperm and 
egg possess "potential." I have talked to a biochemist who said they more 
or less can unite in only one way to produce a zygote. You could also say 
that all your nucleated cells have the potential to become full-fledged 
human beings on their own through cloning. To fail to see them through on 
this, or to fail to see that any one human sperm and egg unite and grow, 
when you could do otherwise, would seem to be the same order of offense (if 
it is to be regarded as such) as human abortion at the monocellular stage. 
I don't feel that human suspendees are at all in the same category as 
single cells. You don't just have some nebulous "potential" but, assuming 
good preservation, a developed individual complete with memory and 
personality characteristics, thus a great deal more.

Mike Perry
cryonicist, abortion rights advocate (early stages anyway).

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