X-Message-Number: 1795
Date: 22 Feb 93 02:09:54 EST
From: Clarissa Wells <>
Subject: CRYONICS Terminating Membership

To: 

I am a little overwhelmed by the fulsome responses to my last letter, but 
since I lamented that no one seemed to care, I can hardly complain now that 
people are speaking up. I will just have to do my best to respond as well as I 
can, bearing in mind my relatively limited experience in cryonics. 

In medicine, there is a Hippocratic Oath. As I recall, it is a pledge to heal 
the sick without discriminating. If cryonics emergency workers are serious 
about saving people's lives, it seems to me this puts them in the same 
category as doctors; and therefore, they too should make a pledge, explicit or 
implicit, to help people regardless of who those people are. There is a very 
simple, obvious reason for this: a health-care worker exercises the power of 
life and death. If workers have no principles to guide them, so they exercise 
or withhold their power indiscriminately, how can we ever trust them? 

Of course, there will be limitations imposed by resources, and a small 
organization cannot afford to extend free "treatment" which would actually 
cost the organization thousands of dollars. However, it is just as important 
for a small organization not to compromise its ethics. As soon as you start 
refusing "treatment" because of some words that someone said, it seems to me 
you become an organization which people begin to fear more than they trust. 

In response to Mr. Riskin: You imply that if I were a member of a cryonics 
organization, it would be in my own selfish interest to keep "agitators" out. 
Perhaps under some (rather implausible) circumstances this might be true, but 
in the long term, it seems to me, an exclusionary cryonics organization would 
attract fewer members than an open cryonics organization. After all, who wants 
to belong to a group where one may be denied health care as a punishment for 
being outspoken? Therefore, even in the simplistic context of "What's in it 
for me?" (in which you have chosen to debate), I would say that self interest 
dictates a humane policy. 

Mr. Henson's letter is long and seemingly full of contradictions, which makes 
it difficult to answer. On one hand, he indicates that Alcor can already get 
rid of any member it chooses. But if this is the case, why did Mr. Henson need 
to ask for new rules that would allow Alcor to prohibit people from rejoining? 
In his same letter, Mr. Henson indicates that a nonmember can cause just as 
much trouble as a member--if not more. In that case, Mr. Henson seems to have 
no rational justification for wanting to keep some people out. This leads me 
to suggest that maybe there is an IRRATIONAL reason. Did he, perhaps, merely 
want the power to punish someone whom he disapproves of? 

One last point about Mr. Henson's letter. He says "a case can be made" that a 
former member cost Alcor half a million dollars. However, Mr. Henson chooses 
not to make that case. He prefers simply to hint at it, knowing that I cannot 
reply, because I don't know what he knows. This is arguing by innuendo, and it 
is not a technique that I respect highly. 

Originally, I posed an ethical question. Yet Mr. Henson doesn't even try to 
talk about what is right and wrong. Instead, he talks in terms of expediency. 
In view of this, I now feel even more strongly that Mr. Henson does not seem 
an ideal person to help run a cryonics organization. 

However, I do thank him for quoting the bylaw which gives Alcor arbitrary 
power to expel a member. I did not know that this bylaw exists. I am glad to 
be more fully informed, although I am sorry to say it makes me feel a little 
less enthusiastic about the idea of Alcor membership. 

                                Yours Sincerely
                                Clarissa Wells 

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