RE: [dvd-discuss] Specific ironies of the CTEA

[Stephen L Johnson <sjohnson(at)monsters.org>]

On Tue, 2002-12-10 at 14:26, Ballowe, Charles wrote:
> >From the cryonics faq at:
> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/tsf/Public-Mail/cryonics/html/00
> 18.9.html
> 
> there are 3 different definitions of "dead" that they use.
> 
> clinical death - A person is clinically dead if they are in cardiac 
> 	arrest and their pupils do not contract when light is shined 
> 	into them. 
> 
> information-theoretic death - A person has reached information-theoretic 
> 	death if a healthy state of that person could not possibly be 
> 	deduced from the current state. The exact timing of 
> 	information-theoretic death depends on presently unknown details of 
> 	how the brain works. The current best estimates put it several hours
> 
> 	after clinical death.
> 
> legal death - A person is legally dead if a doctor has signed a death 
> 	certificate with his or her name on it. This tends to happen when 
> 	the doctor believes that modern technology will not be able to 
> 	restore them to health. The criteria for legal death change with
> time. 
> 
> If no physician signs a death certificate, the the person wouldn't be
> legally
> dead, right? Maybe clinically, but that isn't what matters to copyright law.
> 
> I think this makes a great counter to "life+" on the term. 
frozen and NEVER declared dead.

This is probably way off-topic. But here is some more information about
information-theoretical death.

It's research that's an outgrowth of reviving people from states of
hypothermia (e.g. drowning frozen lake). The low body temperatures
brings the human body into a state similar to suspended animation. This
state greatly extends the amount of time before irreversible death
occurs.

New research is showing that you don't have to have extremely low body
body temperature to induce the suspended statue. The magic temperature
seems to be in the 80s (F). This can eventually have tremendous
ramifications.

For example, many years ago a young women was walking down the sidewalk
(in Buffalo, NY, if my memory serves me correctly). Suddenly, she
nosedived into the payment. She had suffered a cardiac arrest. All of
efforts to revive her at the scene and at the hospital failed. Luckily
for her one of the doctors at the hospital was/is doing research into
the hypothermia phenomenon. The doctor had the young lady's body
temperate lowered and set up on a heart/lung machine. A few hours later,
the young lady just woke up with no ill effects (other then a broken
nose :).

--
Stephen L Johnson <sjohnson@monster.org>