Given mandatory donation, it seems reasonable to me that opting out of it would be standard part of the paperwork involved with signing up for cryonics.
If you can opt out of it, it’s not mandatory! You could get the best of both worlds, though: vitrify your head and donate the rest of your body. The only loss is, I think, your corneas.
The process of vitrifying the head makes the rest of the body unsuitable for organ donations. If the organs are extracted first, then the large resulting leaks in the circulatory system make perfusing the brain difficult. If the organs are extracted after the brain is properly perfused, they’ve been perfused too, and with the wrong substances for the purposes of organ donation.
Oh, thank you! I didn’t realize that. Perhaps a process could be developed? For example, maybe you could chill the body rapidly to organ-donation temperatures, garrote the neck, extract the organs while maintaining head blood pressure with the garrote, then remove the head and connect perfusion apparatus to it?
For example, maybe you could chill the body rapidly to organ-donation temperatures, garrote the neck,..
It’s worse than I said, by the way. If the patient is donating kidneys and is brain dead, the cryonics people want the suspension to happen as soon as possible to minimize further brain damage. The organ donation people want the organ donation to happen when the surgical team and recipient are ready, so there will be conflict over the schedule.
In any case, the fraction of organ donors is small, and the fraction of cryonics cases is much smaller, and the two groups do not have a history of working with each other. Thus even if the procedure is technically possible, I don’t know of an individual who would be interested in developing the hybrid procedure. There’s lots of other stuff that is more important to everyone involved.
Right, but I assumed that Julian was still talking about Yvain’s idea that Mblume referred to, where the government-mandated system is not strictly “mandatory” but rather the default option from which you can opt out.
Mandatory donation would really screw you over if you were trying for cryonics.
Given mandatory donation, it seems reasonable to me that opting out of it would be standard part of the paperwork involved with signing up for cryonics.
If you can opt out of it, it’s not mandatory! You could get the best of both worlds, though: vitrify your head and donate the rest of your body. The only loss is, I think, your corneas.
The process of vitrifying the head makes the rest of the body unsuitable for organ donations. If the organs are extracted first, then the large resulting leaks in the circulatory system make perfusing the brain difficult. If the organs are extracted after the brain is properly perfused, they’ve been perfused too, and with the wrong substances for the purposes of organ donation.
Oh, thank you! I didn’t realize that. Perhaps a process could be developed? For example, maybe you could chill the body rapidly to organ-donation temperatures, garrote the neck, extract the organs while maintaining head blood pressure with the garrote, then remove the head and connect perfusion apparatus to it?
It’s worse than I said, by the way. If the patient is donating kidneys and is brain dead, the cryonics people want the suspension to happen as soon as possible to minimize further brain damage. The organ donation people want the organ donation to happen when the surgical team and recipient are ready, so there will be conflict over the schedule.
In any case, the fraction of organ donors is small, and the fraction of cryonics cases is much smaller, and the two groups do not have a history of working with each other. Thus even if the procedure is technically possible, I don’t know of an individual who would be interested in developing the hybrid procedure. There’s lots of other stuff that is more important to everyone involved.
Right, but I assumed that Julian was still talking about Yvain’s idea that Mblume referred to, where the government-mandated system is not strictly “mandatory” but rather the default option from which you can opt out.