Bioethicists like Wesley J. Smith would probably say that Hal has acted “selfishly” by seeking the benefit of future medical advances that no one has invented and developed yet. I guess, for example, that it took a really selfish prick back in the 1980′s who wanted someone to come up with a way to sequence his entire genome for a few hundred dollars to gain some insight into his health prospects or his offsprings’, instead of living in ignorance of whatever genetic issues he might have.
But assuming that people living, in, say, the 24th Century, have figured out how to revive and restore cryonauts, and that they have socially normalized this procedure, they won’t go around complaining about the “selfishness” of the people who have taken advantage of cryonics. They’ll just view cryonics as a medical specialty that some of them might have to resort to themselves in case 24th Century medicine can’t help them, and they seek the help of, say, 27th Century medicine. (How dare you selfishly wanting the health care of the 27th Century!)
Bioethicists like Wesley J. Smith would probably say that Hal has acted “selfishly” by seeking the benefit of future medical advances that no one has invented and developed yet. I guess, for example, that it took a really selfish prick back in the 1980′s who wanted someone to come up with a way to sequence his entire genome for a few hundred dollars to gain some insight into his health prospects or his offsprings’, instead of living in ignorance of whatever genetic issues he might have.
But assuming that people living, in, say, the 24th Century, have figured out how to revive and restore cryonauts, and that they have socially normalized this procedure, they won’t go around complaining about the “selfishness” of the people who have taken advantage of cryonics. They’ll just view cryonics as a medical specialty that some of them might have to resort to themselves in case 24th Century medicine can’t help them, and they seek the help of, say, 27th Century medicine. (How dare you selfishly wanting the health care of the 27th Century!)
Reference: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/24thcenturymedicine.html