X-Message-Number: 5893
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Cryonics/Legal/Gerbils
Date: 7 Mar 96 01:31:57 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <> <>


In <> John Sharman <> 
writes:

>You may take that view; the law (so far as I am aware) does not share
>it. Do you or do you not accept that all the cryonically frozen people
>are AS OF NOW legally and medically dead. Please answer this question;
>don't try to dodge it.

	I have never dodged these questions (and you are asking TWO
questions, not one).  Cryonics patients all have death certificates,
so of course they are legally dead.  But so what?  As you yourself
have pointed out, legally dead people sometimes do wake up and go
on to live long healthy lives.  Legal labels make for convenient
administration, but they do not carry any weight as scientific
argument.  The appropriate question is not whether cryonics patients
are legally dead, but rather SHOULD they be classed as such. 

	As to your second question, most cryonics patients (despite
being legally dead) are definitely NOT medically dead at the start
of cryonics procedures.  Several hours ago I posted a lengthy essay
explaining the various criteria for legal death, and how they differ
from medical death, and I shall not repeat it here.

	Now the real question.  Are cryonics patients medically 
dead at the END of cryonics procedures?  Only a couple of months
ago I would have said that this question cannot be properly
answered without knowing *future* criteria for medical death.
Recently, however, spontaneous and evoked electrical activity
has been obtained in brain tissue thawed from -196'C.  This
suggests that cryonics patients cryopreserved under the
very best conditions today may in fact NOT be medically dead by
CURRENT criteria applied to comatose patients on life support.

	I trust I have answered your questions.

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

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