Re: Cryonics Terminology

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Jul 26 2002 - 20:35:03 MDT


At 07:14 PM 7/26/02 -0500, S.J. Van Sickle wrote:

>The word "cryonics" has been long hated.

It has? By whom? (Certainly the vulgar confusion between `cryogenics' and
`cryonics' has long been hated by cryonics insiders, but obviously that's
not what you mean.)

>I came up with this
>series of definitions.

I, for one, find these quite persuasive--with the possible exception,
ironically, of:

>Cryonics: the ethical principle that the legally dead but biologically
>viable should be stabilized and cared for indefinitely until such time as
>they can be restored to health.

Common usage (among those who actually do use the term) connotes techniques
of low-temperature preservation--as the root `cryo-' implies. If a cheap,
reliable near-magical `anti-entropy field' could sustain organic structures
unchanged for long periods of time, we'd surely use that to preserve the
dead while awaiting the development of means to recover them back to health
and life. To call that `cryonics' would seem perverse, although your
suggested definition demands it.

Maybe we need a more inclusive term for effective postmortem stabilization?

Damien Broderick



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