X-Message-Number: 11580
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 16:40:06 +0100
From:  (John de Rivaz)
Subject: more on suicide and lawsuits relating to it

In article: <> Thomas Donaldson 
<> writes:
more on suicide and lawsuits relating to it
> About suicide:
> Any political attempt (ie. writing to officials etc) is unlikely to
> prevent an autopsy.

As far as one particular person is concerned, of course you are right.

But if a general pressure can be put on officals so that they are 
uncomfortable with what they are doing, in the long term changes could 
occur. I must say that as far as I am concerned, if it were feasible to make 
anyone that autopsied me roast in hell for all eternity I should be only too 
pleased to arrange it :-) In fact I would go further as to include all his 
friends and relations, especially the cute defenceless ones :-) Not to make 
even a futile gesture is "axe kneeling". 

At present the amount of pressure cyronicists could put is minimal. But 
there are religions that oppose autopsy, and the mechnics of it are like the 
final scene in the film "Braveheart". Some people in Scotland claim this 
film has given an enormous boost to Scottish Nationalism. If general 
pressure against autopsy could be produced by raising an awareness amongst 
those with religious objections, then it would help cryonics.

Think how campaigns against abortion and vivisection must have driven many 
people from relevant professions. Once the fire of a similar campaign has 
been lit, it would gather a momentum of its own and the more drastic acts 
need not be performed by cryonicists. But humans being what they are, these 
acts will get performed. I have written many times before that cryonicists 
cannot themselves do anything questionable, or even hire anyone else to do 
questionable things. But merely working up human anger against a practise 
such as autopsy is a democratic act protected by the right to free speech, I 
should have thought. If there is no foundation for such anger, then one is 
merely ranting, but if one can "rant" amongst people where there is such a 
foundation, then it is no longer ranting but delivering a stirring "speech".

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz
Homepage:         http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JohndeR
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