Post mortem sign ups, under cover and shameful or open and proud?

 
I have received many confidential letters on the issue of post mortem sign ups.

One letter writer said:

>Go ahead and establish your facility and take the Australian case if you wish,
>but please do so quietly! If you want to inspire public interest in
>cryonics, then go public with your best cases, not your worst.

I am thankful for the many wise suggestions.
I will give the advice serious consideration.

At the same time, I do however, think that the many post mortem requests for cryonic suspension is a topic that we need to handle better than we do today, and that the solution is not to decline such requests, but to get enough publicity about the problem so that people actually will sign up on time.
E.g. the solution is not to decline such cases but to get the publicity about the problems with post mortem cases, so that cases that otherwise would have come in post mortem, henceforth come in pre mortem. One way to get such publicity is to do one post mortem case in the open, stating all its problems but that we are doing it anyway out of compassion
even though the ods are smaller, and so to wake people up to the fact that they most likely wouldn't get the same help if they were as late to sign up, and that as far as being brought back rather than just being cloned they better sign up pre mortem.

There is also of course the issue of all the kids that are in favour of cryonics and want to freeze their parents and grand parents who were not in favour of cryonics. I think we for that reason for a long time to come will see a lot of post mortem request, in cases where the kids never brought up or dared to bring up the issue or simply couldn't sign up their relatives while the latter were alive.

I still think cryonics could benefit from accomodating such cases, by thereby getting more people and more resources. Rather than offending the peopleinvolved by turning down their post mortem requests we could have recruited these and their resources into the cryonic movement by being more accomodating.

Furthermore, I still think that a lot can be done to restore life even fromlong dead corpses.
Thus I am inclined to assist in such cases. It is all a question as to whatone want accomplished: I would like to preseve DNA fragments so that the corpse can be cloned.
I look upon maintaining the whole corpse as safer and offering more future possibilities than if one just maintained cell samples.

I look upon cloning from dead cell samples as a good case,
while others still look upon any case that can't just be thawed out and then be alive,
as a bad case.

Since most of the world's countries do not have cryonic storage facilities,I also think that much can be gained by publicly going through all the steps in setting up a facility and
in carrying out a suspension, how adverse the case might be, and even if the case is as adverse as they can be.

Maybe such a public process can lead the way to more facilities being set up,
since more people will have contributed to and learned from the public process.

There might still be many obstacles when it comes to setting up a Norwegianfacility
and suspending the Australian case. Maybe we have to go through a lengthy political process
to get it all done. But maybe, just maybe we by taking on such a process will make it so much easier for better cases to be suspended and facilities to be established in all the countries that cryonisists so far have not managed to set up facilities in.

Maybe the media would show some interest for all the obstacles involved, and for the challenge of overcoming all these?

E.g. In most European countries cryonisists have run into obstacles that sofar have stopped them. Maybe the time has come to face up to these obstacles in the open, and do what it takes publically and politically to make cryonics a common and established procedure in these countries. Maybe the obstacles we face here only can be overcome if we do what it takes openly?

Sincerely,

Trygve Bauge
Received on Tue Jul 03 18:40:01 2001