X-Message-Number: 2162
Subject: CRYONICS Recalcitrant relatives
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 93 18:33:06 -0400
From: 

Richard Schroeppel inspired me to write a real answer to the question
in the FAQ about how to deal with relatives who will not cooperate
with your cryonics arrangements.  (He isn't my relative, just someone
who has been giving good feedback about the FAQ.)  Here's what I
wrote; any comments?  I suspect that someone who has actually had
battles with relatives about this would have more well-tested advice.

There are some holes in this, pointed out by Richard: how to deal with
children, or relatives who you think will try to break your will, for
instance.  He also mentioned this question:

   What practical steps can I take to make my suspension likely?

which seems like a good one to try to answer, but not here and now.

Tim Freeman

--- Begin quote from draft FAQ
6-10. How can uncooperative relatives derail suspensions?

Someone confronted with the death of a close relative is likely to do
everything possible to postpone or prevent it, even after there is
clearly no hope of the potential suspendee ever regaining
consciousness.  This leads naturally to continuing hospital life
support in marginal circumstances, which can lead to months of brain
ischemia before the suspension happens.  Also, cancers tend to
metastasize, and given enough time and enough life support, they are
likely to metastasize to the brain and consume much of it.  By the
time suspension happens, there may not be much to suspend.

It is important for your relatives to understand what is going to
happen.  In particular, if you have arranged for neurosuspension, you
don't want your relatives to do something surprising when they figure
out that the people from your cryonics organization are at some point
going to use a power tool to cut your head off.

6-11. How should I deal with relatives who will not cooperate with my
      suspension arrangements?

Use a Power of Attorney for Health Care to prevent uncooperative
relatives from derailing any cryonics arrangements you make.  The idea
is to make sure that the person making decisions about your health
cooperate with your desire to be suspended.  At one time, Alcor
published a list of people willing to accept the power of attorney; I
do not know whether they still do this.

6-12. How can I persuade my spouse to cooperate with my suspension 
      arrangements?

(I will refer to the spouse as "she" because my spouse happens to have
that gender.)

The best solution is to have a spouse who cooperates because she
thinks cryonics is a good idea.  It may take some education to get to
that point, but if you can get there, everything is fine.

The second best solution is to have a spouse who respects your
decision to do something she thinks is a mistake, specifically
cryonics.  In this case you may still want to find someone else to
give the Power of Attorney for Health Care to.  Your spouse may become
less respectful of your decision after it becomes clear that you
aren't going to regain consciousness within the next few decades and
she is confronted with the tangible reality of the suspension
procedure.

The worst situation to be in is to have a spouse who vows to disrupt
your suspension arrangements.  Here are my opinions about how to deal
with that.  The key point is that people often are not reasonable
unless they have an incentive to be reasonable; therefore you can
expect every negotiation you participate in to go wrong unless the
other participants have incentives to be reasonable.  Sometimes you
will have to provide those incentives.

Decide who owns your body.  If your spouse owns your body, then you'll
have to settle for no cryonics.  If you own your body, then do
cryonics and try to make your spouse deal with the resulting negative
emotions instead of you.  If you and your spouse have shared ownership
of your body, then the two of you will have interminable arguments
about it; I therefore disrecommend this option.

Generally speaking, your spouse will not be happy if she identifies
with a bunch of random compulsions to control things outside of her
legitimate area of interest.  Therefore the best way to promote her
long-term happiness and sanity is to dissuade her from identifying
with these random compulsions.  One way to do this is to refuse to
cooperate with them.

Also, you will not be happy if you allow your spouse to control things
inside your legitimate area of interest that are outside of hers.  If
you have correctly judged your spouse's legitimate area of interest,
and you give her a choice between doing the right thing and divorce,
then either she will do the right thing, or she's really nuts and
you're probably better off with the divorce.

I feel obligated to describe the experience I'm basing this advice on:
I have not had an argument with my spouse about cryonics.  I am now
happily married, and before that I had a string of failed
relationships.  I believe that things changed for the better for me
when I decided to follow the negotiating strategies described above.
---End quote from draft FAQ.

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