X-Message-Number: 3914 Date: Mon, 27 Feb 95 00:40:18 From: Steve Bridge <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Cryonics Questions To CryoNet >From Steve Bridge, President, Alcor February 26, 1995 In reply to Message #3899 From: Eugen Leitl <> Newsgroups: sci.cryonics Subject: Re: glycerol questions Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 18:06:06 +0100 Message-ID: <> References: <> <> Mr. Leitl asks some of the most basic questions in cryonics and only wants a brief outline. He also challenges the cryonics community to answer them to "show a greater transparency and thus gain a higher credulity level." Believe us, Mr. Leitl, we've been telling everyone who will listen the answers to these questions for years. Very few of these things are confidential, if any. I'm not sure it would be worth the effort of someone to thoroughly answer those particular questions on sci.cryonics or on Cryonet (an e-mail mailing list to which much of sci.cryonics is also posted), since we can do so more efficiently and completely by pointing toward material already written. Most, if not all, of that information is readily available on CryoNet and in the various publications of the cryonics organizations. Much is in the FAQ for sci.cryonics, which I hope Mr. Leitl has found by now. That also includes the addresses for the different organizations, all of whom have detailed information on those questions. The instructions for contacting CryoNet should be available in the FAQ for sci.cryonics, if not elsewhere. Alcor would be happy to send Mr. Leitl (or anyone else) a package of material which will answer many of these questions, leaving us more time to answer the NEW questions the reader will immediately have. Send your request to or or call us at 1-800-367-2228 (U.S. and Canada) or 602-922-9013 (everywhere). I hope someone with more time than I have can point to the particular CryoNet postings or other net information that will be most helpful to Mr. Leitl. I will just mention one item on his list, because I've done work on it recently. >10) Are legal problems real problems? _Is_ the legal status > of cryosuspended person "deseased"? Any indications of > change? In November I posted to CryoNet a long summary of the current legal situation. Ben Best of Canada has added to this for some international situations that he knows of. A much expanded version of my article, along with Ben's article, will be in the 1st Quarter issue of CRYONICS Magazine (unfortunately delayed in publication for a couple of more weeks). I can e-mail a copy of that text to anyone who wants the expanded version, or cannot wait for the magazine to arrive. Maybe I should also send a copy to Kevin for a file copy people can retrieve in the future. To briefly summarize: The legal problems are quite real and often expensive (perhaps over $1 million spent on legal fees to defend cryonics from 1987-1992; a very small amount spent for that purpose since then). The legal status of all cryonic suspension patients is "dead", for reasons detailed in my article. Most simply, we can't prove (yet) that their frozen, non-functional condition will ever be reversible; so why should a government label them as anything else at this time? No signs of change expected there for some time, I'm afraid; although it will be interesting to see if legal changes allowing assisted suicide in the United States (beginning to be discussed and, in one case, approved in various states) will allow dying cryonics patients to choose "very cold storage" as their preferred method of "suicide." That alone will not change the patients' legal status; but it will make many people think about that status for the first time. Steve Bridge Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3914