X-Message-Number: 20313
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 12:02:12 -0400
From: "Stephen W. Bridge" <>
Subject: RE: Reward murder?

To CryoNet
From Steve Bridge
       In reply to:  Message #20310
       Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 23:08:37 -0700
       From: James Swayze <>
       Subject: Reward murder?

I don't get in on many CryoNet discussions these days, but I think I need
to put in some practical thought here, from my several years as Alcor
President.  Note:  I am not currently an Alcor official, employee, or
Director, although I am still an Alcor Advisor; and I do not claim to speak
for Alcor's current management.  I do believe that my perspectives on this
are relatively typical of Alcor's current Board and management team,
however.

James said:
>What happens to our credibility and public opinion, should freezing
murderers
>become actual sentencing practice, the minute some selfish bastard figures
out
>that though he personally might not be able to afford cryonics and
longevity
>methods, he could just kill someone, pay his penance and enjoy
immortality?

First, it is important to realize that part of this discussion is
theoretical in the extreme.  We cannot currently prove that cryonic
suspension works or will ever work as a life-saving technique.  It will be
decades, I suspect, before sufficient proof is available to convince more
than 1% of the population that placing people into suspension is anything
other than a variant method of cadaver disposition.  I think it is highly
unlikely that freezing murderers will be a "sentence" option anytime within
a practical frame of reference, and certainly non-profits like Alcor and CI
are even more unlikely to be involved in something like that.  The legal
fees alone would make it a prohibitively expensive and time-consuming
tangent.  

The possibility that cryonics would EVER become so successful that people
would commit murders with the object of evading justice through cryonics
seems incredibly far-fetched science fiction.  If it were to happen, it
would only be at a time when the criminal believed the likelihood of
success to be very high; and THAT is only likely at a time when cryonics is
so successful that it is a daily part of the public consciousness, like
banks and funeral homes.  People do get mad when bankers or funeral
directors evade the law or public decency in publicly destructive ways. 
But they don't advocate the destruction of  the banking of funeral
industries.  Regulation, yes.

Today, right now, there are MANY public relations or legal disasters that
are much more likely to happen to cryonics companies than freezing
murderers, and any of these potential disasters could terminate a cryonics
company and make cryonics difficult to do anywhere.

But to the basic philosophical principles involved:

1.  Many innocent people have been convicted of crimes.  Many guilty people
have gone uncaught or unconvicted of committing a crime.  When a doctor
sees a gunshot victim in the emergency room, it is not up to the doctor to
be a judge and a jury.  He is not supposed to decide if the patient is a
criminal or a victim.  He is supposed to save the person's life and let the
appropriate jurisdiction decide the legal issues.  Alcor is in the same
position.  In general, once Alcor has accepted a person as a member, it
would be morally wrong for Alcor to refuse to freeze that person at death,
based on an assumption of the guilt or innocence of the member.  Other
legal entities would be responsible for determining what happened to that
person after revival was successful.

2.  On the other hand, this basic medical principle didn't do Dr. Mudd any
good when he treated John Wilkes Booth.  Cryonics officials today must be
aware that blind faith in a set of principles could lead to the destruction
of ALL the patients in suspension.  So Alcor does have a policy (at least
it did for many years and I do not believe it is ever likely to be
dropped), that Alcor can refuse to accept the human remains of a member if
such acceptance would compromise the continued existence of Alcor, the
safety of its patients, or the safety of Alcor's employees.

This also applies to someone who dies of a virulent, contagious disease
like the hemorrhagic viruses.  Right now, Alcor could not accept a victim
of the Ebola virus.  There is a zero % chance that the local coroner or CDC
would LET a suspension team handle such a victim, and the danger of
infection to the suspension team is far to great for Alcor to allow that
anyway.

Yes, I am sure that your creative minds could spin out all kinds of
scenarios that might make Alcor's management turn one way or the other to
balance practicality and principles -- but that is what *management* is
for.  Each case is separate and must be decided at the time, based on the
various details that present themselves.  I don't see much to be gained in
starting a CryoNet discussion in which we speculate about which hairs can
be spilt how thin.

Steve Bridge

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