From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Apr 07 2000 - 21:25:56 MDT
At 04:16 PM 7/04/00 -0400, Robert B. wrote:
>If you are going to have *mandated* organ donations, then the estate
>(or frozen head) of the patient should be compensated for that (since
>presumably you aren't *really* dead yet) as while you are, "on ice"
>so to speak, someone has borrowed the use of your organs. When
>you are reanimated, can you request that they be returned?
It's hard to estimate timelines for this, but with the rapidly moving work
on stem cells etc, and the first-draft genome now finished by Celera,
growing and replacing `borrowed' organs shouldn't be as much trouble as
rejoining a severed head. It seems to me that the main issue is whether
gutting a corpse prior to freezing would (1) interfere with preservation
protocols, and/or (2) require the body to be held for too long at
temperatures that are merely chilly but not chilly enough for later
revival-with-memory.
We kinda assume that we're looking for renovation as well as resuscitation
post mortem, so popping in some self-cloned organs in 20 years shouldn't be
a problem. And if nanomedicine does its Moore's law thing, all this could
be moot anyway. And in the Spike happens around the same time as
cryo-resurrection day, it's more than moot. And... Combinatorial explosion.
Damien
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