Say that, in thirty-plus years, you’re still alive and I’ve been cryonically preserved for a while. What could I have done during my life to convince you to apply your finite resources to resurrect me, rather than someone else?
You signed a contract allowing people developing resuscitation technology to use you as one of their first experimental human revivals.
ETA: Someone has to be the first attempted revival, but I suspect that it may be last in, first out. The later you get frozen, the better the freezing technology, and the sooner the technology to reverse it will be developed. By the time people can be frozen and thawed routinely, there will still be vaults full of corpsicles that no-one knows how to revive yet. All the people in Alcor today might eventually be written off as beyond salvaging.
Hm… under current law, the cryonically preserved are considered dead, and thus any contracts they signed are no more enforceable than a contract with a graveyard to perform one form of burial instead of another. The existing cryonics companies have standardized contracts. I can’t think of any way to create the contract you describe. Do you have any further details in mind?
I wasn’t concerned with the legal details, which will vary from time to time and place to place. At the moment, what obligates Alcor to keep their bodies frozen?
And there are wills. You can already will your body to medical research.
The legal regime that cryonics has operated under has been reasonably stable for the past thirtyish years, with some minor quibbles about registering as a cemetery or not. What reasons lead you to believe that the relevant laws will undergo any more significant changes in the next thirtyish years?
what obligates Alcor to keep their bodies frozen?
At least in part, the fact that the directors are also members, and desire for their own bodies to be kept frozen after they die.
You can already will your body to medical research.
Legally, that’s essentially what the wills of cryonicists already do. (In Ontario, the relevant statute is the ‘Trillium Gift of Life Act’.)
You signed a contract allowing people developing resuscitation technology to use you as one of their first experimental human revivals.
ETA: Someone has to be the first attempted revival, but I suspect that it may be last in, first out. The later you get frozen, the better the freezing technology, and the sooner the technology to reverse it will be developed. By the time people can be frozen and thawed routinely, there will still be vaults full of corpsicles that no-one knows how to revive yet. All the people in Alcor today might eventually be written off as beyond salvaging.
Hm… under current law, the cryonically preserved are considered dead, and thus any contracts they signed are no more enforceable than a contract with a graveyard to perform one form of burial instead of another. The existing cryonics companies have standardized contracts. I can’t think of any way to create the contract you describe. Do you have any further details in mind?
I wasn’t concerned with the legal details, which will vary from time to time and place to place. At the moment, what obligates Alcor to keep their bodies frozen?
And there are wills. You can already will your body to medical research.
The legal regime that cryonics has operated under has been reasonably stable for the past thirtyish years, with some minor quibbles about registering as a cemetery or not. What reasons lead you to believe that the relevant laws will undergo any more significant changes in the next thirtyish years?
At least in part, the fact that the directors are also members, and desire for their own bodies to be kept frozen after they die.
Legally, that’s essentially what the wills of cryonicists already do. (In Ontario, the relevant statute is the ‘Trillium Gift of Life Act’.)