X-Message-Number: 3248
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 1994 23:37:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: CRYONICS:Right to Die


Marc Atkin complains that cryonicists should be able to choose their time
and mode of death, in order to maximize their chances of a good
cryopreservation. Naturally I agree with him, and I imagine that everyone
who has signed with a cryonics organization feels the same way. 

I can't answer all your questions, Marc, but here are some pointers to 
the many conflicting issues involved.

1. "Right to die" legislation is being enacted (or not enacted) on a 
state-by-state basis. Your situation will vary depending on your 
location. Since this remains a controversial issue, it's impossible to 
see, right now, how and when it will affect cryonics.

2. We see cryopreservation as a way of (we hope) perpetuating life, but
most orthodox scientists and doctors believe that it has a zero chance of
achieving its objectives. We believe that all the evidence is on our side,
but we also see that it is going to take a massive shift of assumptions
and values before our outlook on death will be widely accepted. For the
time being, then, the officials we deal with will continue to see cryonics
as a way of killing people, while we see it as a way of potentially saving
lives, and there is usually no way to bridge this misunderstanding.

3. Suicide, assisted or otherwise, is almost always cause for an autopsy,
which in turn means a) the patient will usually be held, unmedicated, for
24 hours or longer, at a temperature significantly above freezing, and b)
the autopsy will usually include dissection of the brain. The medical
examiner has pretty much absolute authority to decide whether to perform
an autopsy. After all, "dead" people have no human rights. The only way to
choose to terminate your life without providing grounds for autopsy is by
refusing food and fluids, and several cryonicists (suffering terminal
illnesses) have taken this path. It is a very painful and distressing
process and does not lead to an optimum cryopreservation. 

4. Since cryonics is not a recognized medical procedure, it is not legal 
to "premedicate" a patient (i.e. administer appropriate drugs to optimize 
a cryopreservation) before the patient is declared legally dead.

5. It is not advisable for a medically qualified employee or associate of
a cryonics organization to pronounce legal death, because this can be seen
as a "conflict of interest"--i.e. a judge might believe that the employee
was motivated to "kill off" the cryonics patient so that the cryonics
organization can get the insurance money. Consequently, legal death must
be pronounced by staff who probably have no interest in cryonics, and may
be hostile toward the concept. As a result, they may feel little sense of 
urgency about it.

6. The accepted medical definition of death has changed over time, but is 
still quite different from a cryonicist's definition of death. Legal 
death is pronounced when there is no evidence of pulse, respiration, or 
brain activity (I am oversimplifying, here). To a cryonicist, a patient 
is not necessarily permanently dead if the brain structure and cell 
states have been preserved, or have not yet deteriorated. Cold-water 
drowning victims are frequently resuscitated after being "dead" by normal 
definitions for two or three hours. Still, the gap continues to exist 
between what seems obvious to us, and what seems appropriate in the 
world of orthodox medicine.

My personal feeling is that cryonics, right now, has only a small chance 
of success, for two main reasons: a) there has been insufficient money 
for research on reversible brain cryopreservation, and b) we are not able 
to choose how and when we die. If both of these issues could be resolved 
in our favor, I believe cryonics would become a good bet as opposed to a 
longshot.

Of course, a longshot is still better than no chance at all.

############################################################
Charles Platt, 1133 Broadway (room 1214), New York, NY 10010
      Voice: 212 929 3983      Fax: 212 929 4467

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3248