X-Message-Number: 2280
Subject: CRYONICS Disapproving of neuros
From:  (Charles Platt)
Date: Tue, 25 May 93 15:22:15 EDT

Art Quaife writes: "Certainly the initial press coverage of 
the Dora Kent case focused much on the ghoulish nature of 
what had been done." 

I'm accustomed to the word "ghoulish" being used by people to 
whom cryonics is a scary subject, but it's odd to see this 
pejorative word casually employed by someone who has been 
actively involved in suspensions. It suggests to me that Art 
Quaife's objections to neurosuspension may be as much 
visceral as intellectual. Fundamentally, he may feel it's 
perverse to cut off heads, while Brian Wowk doesn't. 

This whole neuro/whole body discussion has emotional 
overtones, and raises the general subject of people 
disapproving of each other. As a journalist, I've made a 
hobby of visiting obscure groups. One thing I've noticed is 
that when a group feels oppressed or shunned by the general 
public, they usually console themselves by finding some sub-
group that they in turn can disapprove of. And the lower the 
status of the group, the stronger this need tends to be. (One 
time I attended a consciousness-raising group of sado-
masochists. Also at the meeting were two people who said they 
were vampirists--they liked to nick each other's skin and 
lick the blood. The sadomasochists were outraged. Flailing 
each other was okay, in fact it was a healthy form of 
pleasure; but licking each other's blood--now, that was 
really SICK!) 

So, getting back to cryonics, it seems that the body-freezers 
tend to disapprove of the head-freezers. And who do the head-
freezers disapprove of? Let's see, how about the permafrost 
freezers? "We'll cut off heads with an electric carving knife 
and dump them in a dewar, but those guys who put people in 
permafrost, that's really OUTRAGEOUS." (I've heard statements 
to this effect, with the appropriate level of moral 
condemnation.) 

I haven't met any permafrost enthusiasts, but I'm willing to 
bet there's some subgroup that they disapprove of, too. 

What I'm getting at, here, is that none of us can be entirely 
objective in these areas; a statement that seems rational can 
just as easily be a rationalization; we're all nutty by 
everyday standards; and a little live-and-let-live doesn't 
hurt.  

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