X-Message-Number: 5831
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley)
Date: 25 Feb 96 04:08:35 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <> <>

In <>  (P. Burridge) writes:

>>       Nope.  Only short-term memory is RAM.  Long-term memory is PROM.
>>This is not speculation, but medical fact.

>Let's accept this premise and make a theoretical quantum leap, to
>the point where your technology allows you to revive long-dead
>frozen stiffs. 
>So your corpse 'wakes up' after x years in suspension and finds his
>long-term memory substantially unimpared. What makes you think the
>conscience of this person is still the same? His essential
>identity: his soul? I'll wager that when this poor, confused, zombie...

	There are hundreds of such "zombies" walking around today:
neurosurgery patients who have had their blood completely drained,
hearts stopped, bodies cooled, and brains at ZERO activity for up
to an hour.  I wonder how they and their families would feel about
you calling them souless zombies? 

	Human beings can and have survived complete brain shutdown
for prolonged periods with no neurological deficits.  Recovery is strictly
a question of how much biochemical injury occurs during the arrest, and
what steps are taken to mitigate and/or reverse the injury.  If you 
restore brain chemistry to its normal state, you get the same person back.
Period.

	Primitive function-based criteria for death are outmoded. 
Modern medicine is showing us that life depends on brain STRUCTURE
not function.  Vital signs are irrelevant.  Nobody is *really* dead
until their brain *structure* is damaged beyond repair.

	If it ever proves feasible to adequately repair the injuries
sustained by today's cryonics patients, the theological implication
will be that they were never really dead in the first place.  They
were instead in a 100 year coma.

>>>Brian Wowk          CryoCare Foundation               1-800-TOP-CARE
>>President           Your Gateway to the Future        

>I see you have an interest to declare...

	Not a financial one, if that's what you are implying.  

 **************************************************************************
 Brian Wowk          CryoCare Foundation               1-800-TOP-CARE
 President           Your Gateway to the Future        
    http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/
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