CryoNet #32694

CryoNet - Sat 10 Jul 2010

    #32694: paternalism--unchosen cryostasis [Ettinger]

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Message #32694
From: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:56:52 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: paternalism--unchosen cryostasis

Fairly often the question arises about the ethics of freezing a patient who 
 had not chosen that option for himself. One frequent viewpoint is that the 
 wishes of the deceased should be respected and he should not be frozen if 
he had  not expressed an interest, and more emphatically if he had expressed 
lack of  interest or opposition.
 
My view is that, in almost all circumstances, the patient should be  
cryopreserved if we can arrange it. 
 
The most obvious cases would involve children or mentally incompetent  
patients. Parents do not allow children to choose potentially fatal behavior,  
such as playing in the street, no matter how much they want to. Likewise a  
patient who is non compos mentis because of age or/and illness should not be  
allowed to throw away his chances.
 
Intermediate cases are somewhat more problematic. In a few cases  the next 
of kin has cooperated in the suspension even if she is personally  against 
it. This was the case with Walter Runkel, a long-time CI officer. His  wife 
Luise was against cryonics, I believe mainly for religious reasons, and she  
could have prevented the suspension. But she knew how much it meant to Walt, 
and  she cooperated and paid cash for the suspension. That's love.
 
More often, the negative next of kin find it easy to say no. My brother  
Alan  was a long-time CI member, with arrangements in place except that  
funding was through his will. That would have worked all right--I would have  
advanced the funds pending probate and settlement of the estate. But in his 
last  illness he became depressed, and his children said he told them he had 
changed  his mind and didn't want to be frozen. I tried to get them to freeze 
him anyway,  but they declined, purportedly because they wanted to honor his 
wishes. I think  they just wanted the money, but I tried everything I could 
think of without  success.
 
Call it paternalism if you will, but if you have the power I believe you  
should use it to get the patient frozen, even against the wishes of himself 
and  relatives. You don't let children play in the street, you don't let 
senile  relatives forget their medication, and you don't throw away a friend's 
or  relative's chance for life just because he has a mental block. If he is 
revived  and then berates you, so what? If he is revived into a nasty 
situation about  which you can do nothing, well, gamble lost, but that is extremely 
unlikely. 
 
Robert Ettinger

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