X-Message-Number: 1886
Date: 04 Mar 93 05:19:10 EST
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: CRYONICS Member Exclusion

From: Mike Darwin
To: Steve Jackson
Re: Member Exclusion
Date: 3 March, 1993

     Mr. Jackson gives the example of the man who murders his family and 
then suggests that this would be the perfect case to cancel someone's 
suspension membership over.

     I must disagree.  The problem is not how heinous the crime or how 
disgraceful to cryonics or Alcor it is.  The problem is one of DUE 
PROCESS.  This problem is *not new*.  Medicine confronted it and dealt 
with it a long time ago.  The medical solution was in my opinion a good 
one; that's why I adopted it.  Steve Harris does a beautiful job of laying 
all this out in better words than I could put to bit and byte.  However, I 
think Steve fails to lay it out simply, clearly, and succinctly.  So I 
will try, one more time...

1)  Decisions involving costly, *irreversible* courses of action are best 
handled by a deliberate, careful, and (as much as possible) dispassionate 
process known as due process.  In most societies this is known as the 
judicial system (and includes binding arbitration as well).

2)  A critically important element in this process is a more-or-less 
impartial judiciary.  This is why our constitutional Forefathers spent all 
the effort they did to try to insulate the judiciary.  To some extent they 
have succeeded since neither you Mr. Jackson, nor I, are in jail or dead 
for crimes we did not commit but for which other elements of the state 
would dearly have loved to have found us guilty.*

3)  If you wish Alcor or other cryonics organizations to become involved 
in making life or death decisions which are costly and potentially 
*irreversible* then you must provides for the mechanics of due process 
including a law, a judiciary, a jury system, and so on.  Medical and other 
emergency people wisely concluded that *this was not their job* and left 
the whole system of crime and punishment (and/or reform or cure) to the 
mechanisms of society for which we are all taxed and in which we are all 
compelled to participate (as jurors, etc.).

4)  I submit that Alcor not involve itself in setting up a complex 
machinery to do what it cannot do: decide dispassionately about the fate 
of someone who tears up a cryonics facility and thaws everyone out, and so 
on...

5)  As Steve Harris and others have been at pains to point out, where you 
draw the line is critical.  I am stating unequivocally that I do not wish 
to be charged (as a cryonics care provider) with drawing that line.  And 
further, that I do not trust the likes of the Alcor Board (ANY Alcor 
Board) to draw that line.

6)  Finally, I would point out that freezing someone doesn't equal 
reviving them and restoring them to society.  It constitutes a holding 
action which buys time.  Time not only for the patient, but for the 
society and yes, even the justice system to carefully reconsider.  

     I  don't like irreversible actions and in particular I am deeply 
uncomfortable with people who are in a hurry to carry them out.  Are you 
one of those people?  Why are you in such a hurry to protect cryonics from 
creating a situation where the object of your ire is *totally immobilized, 
totally helpless and totally dependent upon Alcor for continued survival*?  
That makes me deeply suspicious that it is NOT Alcor's well-being you are 
so concerned about.  

* I am reminded here of a true story which Saul tells of Comrade Stalin 
calling up the KGB to report that his boots are missing and to order an 
investigation begun.  Sometime later he found his boots where he mislaid 
them and called the KGB back to inform them of this and to call off the 
investigation.  He was told: "But Comrade Stalin we can't call off the 
investigation since 10 people have already confessed."

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