From: Spike Jones (spike66@attglobal.net)
Date: Sun Apr 08 2001 - 22:34:41 MDT
John Marlow wrote:
> Why lose all of them?
> Because physicians, religious organizations, legislators, Luddites
> and assorted do-gooders are going to make it impossible to proceed
> legally in the United States...
John, do you remember the flap about test tube babies in the 70s?
All we really had to do is just DO IT. Then a few years later, everyone
could see these children that some considered unethically conceived.
They were regular people, who had souls (whatever that means),
they were real people. The debate went away. I seldom hear anyone
protesting in-vitro fertilization today.
What we need is a body transplant patient to get in front
of the TV and say "I am paralysed, but I am a still a person,
I have feelings, and I am alive because of a novel
medical technique." The debate would fade.
> Suppose, for example, someone signs off on the donor thing for a
> fresh corpse--only to learn later that the corpse is walking around
> with someone else's head attached. suppose further that they sue,
> saying "I didn't sign off on this; I want the body cremated."
Easy. Tell them that the body *will* be cremated,
whenever the head now attached to it is finished with it.
Actually I seriously doubt anyone would sue to have
someone killed. Body transplant advocates might want
to intentionally sue, after the operation, simply to
have the proletariat rise up and say "spare the head!"
I suspect in this big world we could find a family *eager*
to donate the entire body of a braindead member in an
attempt to save a terminal paralysed patient. We really
only need one, to start with, to show that the person we
are *really does* reside entirely in the brain. spike
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