I embrace change. I seek personal growth daily. If I’m not learning something new, I quickly become bored and look for a way to add excitement to what’s going on. Some call it multi-tasking, some call it distraction. Either way, I lose focus on what’s really happening if I’m not expanding my knowledge.

Because learning and taking on new challenges is so exciting to me, I can’t envision a day when I would just ‘give up’ and choose dying rather than boredom. Because I’m an atheist, I don’t believe there’s a heaven waiting once I ‘tire’ of this existence. Consequently, immortality shines bright in my mind, and I would welcome it with open arms. The best we can do in that regard at this time, however is cryonics. The current state-of-the-art in cryonics involves learning to freeze tissue without creating ice crystals, a technique known as vitrification. Much research continues to be needed before this becomes an accepted, trouble-free solution to an autopsy, yet progress is being made. I agree with the philosophy that future medicine will be able to cure disease that baffles us today, Much as a heart that had stopped beating meant death in the 1800’s, the medical advances of CPR and defibrillators have extended many useful lives that would have been lost a century ago. Ongoing research into nanotechnology holds promise of future cures and repairs we can only dream of today. Delivering my body into a future where it can be repaired and restarted, taking advantage of other physical modifications developed during the interim, is a very attractive idea to one who desires to live and learn forever.

Hence my participation in a cryonics organization. My activities began in late 1990 when I attended a week-long training presented by one of the top researchers in the field at the time. It was a great introduction into the field of medicine, with a focus on the issues that occur during the time when our legal system decides someone is no longer a viable member of society. At the urging of the instructor, I soon enrolled in a class to become an Emergency Medical Technician. EMTs are pre-hospital basic life support workers whose goal is to stabilize and transport a patient to a hospital following a medical emergency. Having taken the cryonics transport team training, I had the privilege of using those skills in two Bay Area cases, the first in late 1991 and the second in early 1992.

I had been present for the last moments of my first step-father passing away in the late 1970’s, but otherwise had not witnessed someone’s death before these two incidents. What touched me in all three instances was the gradual progression of death, the inability of myself or the nurse attending to identify a precise ‘moment’ or event of death. Breathing had been slowing down for hours or even days. It would be 6 breaths per minute, then 4, and soon 3, maybe 2 now and after an hour we see 1 breath every minute. The heart continues to beat. Muscles occasionally twitch. But the eyes are rolled back and pupils wide open, hinting at brain death, a message that just hasn’t made it to other organs yet. At what point is the damage irreversible for modern technology? Shouldn’t the person be ‘pronounced’ at that time? Wouldn’t it be better to preserve someone’s brain, repository of memory and personality, at a point where it remained viable if given a functioning body for support?

The goal of cryonics is to retain as much viable tissue for later reanimation as possible. Under the current mindset, doctors and relatives are restrained from hastening anyone’s ‘demise’ under threat of murder prosecution. I contend that failing to preserve memory and personality when that is possible is truly as bad a crime. While I understand the paranoia that surrounds the idea of ‘assisted suicide’, ie. “Grandma needs to go quickly, I need my inheritance to pay this month’s mortgage”, I also can’t condone allowing folks, who might otherwise be revived in some future medical scenario, slip away because of archaic laws which have failed to maintain pace with science.

We know that having independent medical evaluations can lead to consensus that one’s medical condition is beyond cure given current techniques. Why, at the time this determination is made, must the patient be forced to endure what is often a pain-wracked withering away? Why can’t an intervention be allowed designed to preserve as much memory and personality as possible, in the hope that future science will be able to help this person? Not everyone will sign up for this kind of treatment, because many, if not most, hold a pessimistic view of the future, and have no desire to see the results of their own life’s actions a few hundred years down the road. But why can’t a minority that is interested be allowed the chance to fulfill their life’s dream?

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