X-Message-Number: 22984
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 15:22:30 -0500
From: RANDY WICKER <>
Subject: Cemetery trap or mistake?

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Cemetery, trap or mistake?  That is an underlying question to this recent 
posting:

>"However, CI is hopeful that matters will soon be
>resolved favorably. The State of Michigan has made it 
>clear in its press release that it is not anti-cryonics 
>and believes that CI could continue to operate 
>successfully if licensed as a cemetery."

  > I am hopeful to be able to make a more substantive 
>announcement in the near future.

             >-- Ben Best, President
                >Cryonics Institute


I hope Cryonics Institute has its eyes open and its ear to the ground with sharp
lawyers

at hand.  Obviously, "accommodating" society by having CI "licensed as a 
cemetery"

might seem reasonable.  However, I smell a trap.  What are the rules and 
regulations

regarding cemeteries?  If an over zealous legislator got legislation passed (as 
in France

or Germany as I recall) that all "bodies must be buried within 30 days", there 
goes CI.

CI  does not see its patients as corpses, it sees them as patients awaiting

reanimation.  By agreeing (without protest, etc) that CI is a cemetery, CI loses
one of its most passionate argument, that it is "caring for patients".

I am not a lawyer.  Perhaps I have seen too many "dirty tricks" played by
a hostile society on those who hold unpopular cryonic viewpoints.  Look
at what simple zoning laws have done in Florida.

Tabloid treatment like that given in Sports Illustrated to the removal of
Ted Williams head is all that is needed for pious legislators to rule that
"human dignity" (that old saw) calls for "proper burial" of the dead.  Oh, I
can hear the moral thunder now of those who think "it is desecration of

human beings" to keep them "frozen like slabs of meat in a freezer".  After all,
doesn't the Bible say "dust to dust"???


No, cryonics is no more an assault on human dignity than human cloning.(to join 
issues)
Both are simple ways some see as a means of survival, as part and parcel
of their "right to life".


Randolfe H. Wicker
Founder, Clone Rights United Front www.clonerights.com 
Spokesperson, Reproductive Cloning Network, www.reproductivecloning.net 
Former CEO, Human Cloning Foundation, www.humancloning.org 
201-656-3280 (Mornings)



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