X-Message-Number: 24388
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 00:18:12 -0400
From: Randolfe Wicker <>
Subject: IS THEIR LIFE AFTER MENTAL DEATH?

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I certainly want to live forever.  I will probably even subject myself to being 
frozen in a tank with strangers to have a small chance of achieving that.


However, I see in my own family tree something more terrible than death itself.
I call it "living on after your brain has died".


My mother has Alzheimer's and is "in perfect health' except for this fact.  She 
just keeps "living along" at 88 after she told me not to mourn if she died at 81
because her life had no more purpose.


She doesn't know me, doesn't know her name, has to be diapered, fed manually, 
etc.  Is she really alive????  I don't think so.

So, should one preserve a body with a dead mind through cryonics?


Isn't there a death that is not just physical?  And isn't that death perhaps 
more total than the cessation of heartbeat and breathing by an "alive" mind?


Should one save the mere shell of a once vibrant human being?  Who believes that
the mind that is no more can truly be restored?


I personally would not send my Mother to Alcor.  I do not believe she exists 
anymore in the "real" sense.  

Cloningly yours,
For eternal life,

Randolfe Wicker


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