X-Message-Number: 20296
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 08:35:52 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #20289 - #20294

What ABOUT freezing murderers etc?

Most people would not object unless they felt that suspension
would prolong the lives of the murderers... not that in most
advanced countries capital punishment is frowned on (put mildly).
I do not know what the legal doctrines would turn out to be in
such cases... and of course if the LAW considered cryonic
suspension to preserve the life of the criminal, it would
have also said that cryonic suspension preserves life. The
opponents to immortality can't have things both ways.

And there is an optimistic side to this idea, too. Suppose
that the opinion leaders in society decided to suspend such
criminals rather than kill them. This would be done not with 
the idea of letting them go free once revived, but with an
idea similar to the reasons for which cancer patients might
be suspended: to wait until a cure for their illness had 
been found. If, separately, the criminal must somehow atone
for their crime, I note that dead criminals can't atone for
anything... while live ones could be, say, forced to pay for
the cloning and re-creation of their victim (though when we
get to such a state, killing anyone would become far more
difficult than it is now).

Such forced atonement, of course, assumes that revenge has
some kind of merit. In future we may come to the conclusion
that it has none, and just cure the criminal of his illness
and leave the matter at that.

                Best wishes and long long life for all,

                       Thomas Donaldson

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