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/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5893