X-Message-Number: 27018
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:05:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeff Davis <>
Subject: Re: well intentioned initiatives

In Message #27006 from David Stodolsky
<>
Subject: Re: well intentioned initiatives
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 22:59:58 +0200

David Stodolsky writes:

> Since forty million American are deprived of regular
medical care due to having no health insurance, this
argument doesn't have much chance of going anywhere.

I've heard this many times and always have to scratch
my head.  Go to the emergency room of the county
hospital, or any hospitial for that matter, and they
will treat you -- they HAVE to -- money or no,
insurance or no.  Yet oddly, this is never mentioned
in the media when the availability of medical care is
discussed.  Not having health insurance and not having
access to medical care --particularly emergency
medical care -- are two different things.

I DO NOT KNOW EVERY PARTICULAR "DEVILISH" DETAIL OF
THIS SITUATION, so if others would like to expand,
elaborate, flesh out, or rebut, I'm anxious to find
out more.

I wrote:

> (2) Concurrently, I would wed the protections of the
> First and 14th Amendments. The First Amendment
> guarantees that "Congress shall make no law
respecting
> an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free
> exercise thereof...".  Since both medical and
funerary
> practices have been and remain strongly influenced
by
> religious beliefs, and since one can make the case
> that the "belief" in cryonics (I personally prefer
the
> term "confidence", but in this context "belief"
works
> better) is the rationalist equivalent of "religious
> faith", one can then assert that the equal
protection
> clause of the 14th Amendment protects cryonicists'
> rights -- as it does similar rights of the devoutly
> religious -- to specify personal medical care and
> "funerary" practices.
  
To which DSS replied:

> I don't see how a non-church organization would get
standing to do this.  

The equal protection clause.  Equal protection.  The
rights and protections enjoyed by religious believers 
cannot (theoretically) be denied to non-believers.  An
atheist enjoys the right to be anti-religious under
the same First Amendment protection that ensures the
protection of religious practitioners. Of course,
because cryonics is a very particular activity,
largely undefined in the legal sense, the case for
equivalence has yet to be made.

Anyway, I'm not interested in being contentious.  I
support, uniformly, anyone seeking to promote
cryonics.  Even when I might be inclined to do things
differently.

Best, Jeff Davis

   "My guess is that people don't yet realize how
          "handy" an indefinite lifespan will be." 
                            J Corbally



		
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