X-Message-Number: 5895
From: 
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Death
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 96 18:54:19 -0500
Message-ID: <>

References: <> <>

John Sharman <> writes:
 
>> The statement was made that, prior to successful revival, a corpse is a
>> corpse is a corpse. Plainly false. During the first heart transplant
>> operation, was the patient "dead" until he sat up again?
>
>Nope. Not legally; not medically. Christian Barnard was a noted surgeon
>- not a resurrectionist.
 
 
   No one else has used that description, either.
 

   What of those patients whose bodies are cooled under controlled circumstances
   and whose measurable heart and brain function stop...so surgeons can safely
operate on brain aneurysms? And Do so up to 45 minutes?
 
   Now, they knoe they should be able to, and almost always do bring them
back from this state. Yet at the time, these people are flatlined. `Legally'
dead, in most places. Is this ressurection? Or just proof that death
continues to be a fuzzy continuum, rather than the sharp dividing line
you seem to advocate.
 
   Laws cannot help but be arbitrary to some degree (this is why we have
judges, to decide if the spirit of the law is being met, if not the letter),
but new knowledge can, and knowledge for which a reasoned expectation exists
might change the appropriateness of laws. Do not people with serious, long-
term, presently incurable conditions (AIDS, paralysis, etc.) hope to live
long enough to benifit from a cure or improved treatment to come? Cryonics
is the ultimate expression of this hope, when all else has failed. Facts
may or may not show it to be ultimately unworkable...but attempting to
legislate it away will not change the science, or the argument. Merely
deny the potential benefit to those who have no other recourse.
 
   Frank


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