CHAPTER VI
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Even though our Supreme Court is sometimes accused of radicalism, jurisprudence in general is very conservative. In fact, some jurists face rigidly backward; they don't care where they're going, but only want to know where they've been. They are perpetually astonished that tomorrow always arrives. But they, like their more progressive colleagues, may as well face up to the fact that there really is a future, and that it is more comfortable as well as more dignified to walk into it than to be dragged in.
Not only the bodies of the frozen must be protected, but also their property; and not only their property, but also their rights. Remember Ralph Waldo Emerson: "For what avail the plough or sail or land or life, if freedom fail?" The defender of the status of the frozen, as of us all, must be the law.
The law indeed, but what law? Why, the law that will be shaped in the usual way, in the legislatures and more especially in the courts, by test, re-test, compromise, and evolution. While its outlines are still dim, we can look at some of the obvious problems, and conjecture about solutions.
To begin with, there will be an attempt to fit the freezers into the structure of laws governing the disposal of bodies and the
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operation of cemeteries, mausoleums, and home crypts. Conceivably, this attempt might cause some localities to try to outlaw freezers altogether; but the advantage would seem to be with those backing the freezers.
Present laws in general seem to give priority to the wishes of the deceased and of the next of kin, subject to the community interest with respect to health hazards, property values, and common decency. Courts of equity have power to settle controversies as to the burial of the dead, the care of their remains after burial, and the preservation of the place of interment from wanton violation or unnecessary disturbance. (73)
There is legal precedent to allow unusual treatment of bodies. In Seaton v. Commonwealth, 149 Ky. 498, the defendant buried his child in a wood in a paper box, without religious ceremony, yet the court held that no criminal action would lie. (73) Michigan law states that the next of kin ". . . can bury the corpse in any manner he sees fit, so long as it does not outrage public decency or amount to a public nuisance." (73) But a disposition permit is required.
Further, the burden of proof will apparently rest on those opposing the freezers: "An unlawful, improper or dangerous establishment . . . may be enjoined, but not at the suit of one . . . who cannot show the likelihood of positive and substantial damage." (72)
If some locality decides a freezer is an outrage or a nuisance and orders burial, the relatives of the frozen will no doubt be able to obtain a temporary restraining order against enforcement, since time would be vital only to the frozen. If lower court decisions should be adverse (which is not easy to imagine), then probably the issue could be taken to the United States Supreme Court on the question of "equal protection," granted in the Fourteenth Amendment.
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If, for a time, freezing in some localities is legally too difficult, then many people will leave those localities.
Definitions of Death; Rights and Obligations of the Frozen
The only definition of death acceptable to a biologist is that of Dr. A. S. Parkes: "Death is the state from which resuscitation of the body as a whole is impossible by currently known means." (110) Implicit in Dr. Parkes' definition, nearly is the main thesis of this hook: that if we use extreme freezing to prevent deterioration, sooner or later "currently known means" will be adequate, and the body will no longer be regarded as dead. The present legal definition of death, effectively, is simply any condition discouraging enough to induce the attending physician to sign a death certificate. Usually this means "clinical death" - cessation of breathing and heartbeat - but not necessarily, since artificial respiration, heart massage, or other measures may be indicated.
When we quick-freeze a freshly dead corpse, we have someone who is thoroughly dead by current criteria, but who has potential life in almost the same way as a drowning victim who may be helped by a respirator. This is something new in the world of jurisprudence, and account must be taken of it.
When suspended animation becomes feasible, some will choose to be frozen alive, making their journey to the future first class, perhaps with stopovers along the way to check on conditions. While in the freezer, such a person will not be dead by Dr. Parkes' definition. Yet his active life will be only potential; he will be thoroughly inert and will require a special kind of legal status and protection, just like an actual cadaver.
Heretofore a corpse has had in itself neither rights nor obligations; now it will have both. His rights will include protection of his body and of his property, governmental supervision of
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the freezer and of his trust funds. His obligations will include the duty to pay taxes out of his funds and property and to submit his estate to regulation. Furthermore, the manner of his previous life and of his death may affect the nature of his privileges and duties after resuscitation.
Perhaps the law will come to recognize three classes of people in addition to the active nuisances: those in suspended animation, those frozen after death, and those who are thoroughly dead because they were burned up, well rotted, lost at sea, or otherwise considered poor bets. We can anticipate some sticky lawsuits questioning the categories assigned in particular cases.
Will a frozen individual be dead enough for the beneficiaries to collect his life insurance? There will usually be two beneficiaries, the next of kin and the corporation handling his freezer and trust funds.) At first thought, the answer seems obvious: since he died in the ordinary course of events, the actuarial basis of his insurance is unchanged, hence the insurance company has suffered no unusual loss and should pay off. But on second thought, things are not quite so simple.
Will not the suicide rate increase? It seems likely that some people not desperate enough to face permanent death might reach the point of choosing premature death followed by freezing, hoping to awaken to find vanished problems and a new life.
This particular problem seems easy to solve. At present, the insurance companies typically pay off on suicide if it is not within two years of the date of issuance of the policy. In the freezer era, the insurance companies will either insert a straight - ban suicide clause or use some kind of sliding scale based on experience. A few enterprising characters may try to camouflage suicide as accident, but this will not be an easy trick, remember-
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ing that the body must not be badly damaged and must be quickly available for freezing. Falling out of windows or under subway trains won't do.
Suicide has always been illegal. The Earl of Birkenhead tells us that in eighteenth century England, on at least one occasion, attempted suicide was punished by hanging the wretch! (6) Served him right, no doubt. Now actual suicide will become punishable as well, perhaps by imposing fines on the estate of the frozen, who will then awaken poorer than he had hoped. We can't have people just sneaking off, shirking their responsibilities.
But the illegality of suicide will have to be carefully reviewed, for clearly there can be extenuating circumstances. If some poor devil is wasting away with an excruciating cancer, he may decide to kill himself and be frozen - both to spare himself the terminal agony and to freeze his body in better condition, as well as to save further hospital bills. Similar remarks could be made about various kinds of unfortunates with crippling deformities. The legislatures will no doubt set up standards, and the courts will issue suicide permits.
We may also note the need for a new word to distinguish destructive suicide from self-inflicted temporary death. Maybe we could call it "suiterm" or "suikaput," to indicate that one has not merely killed himself, but ended himself.
Closely related to the problem of suicide is that of mercy killing. Under what circumstances, if any, will the next of kin be allowed to decide whether a blighted life should drag on or be mercifully frozen? Under what circumstances will the courts make this decision?
If an aged parent is in an institution with his mental faculties
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largely gone, is it right to keep him there? Would he not be better off frozen before his brain deteriorates further? And cannot the family's financial resources be better used to provide him a trust fund than to support him in a sanatorium?
What about a hideously deformed and defective child, as in a severe case of cretinism? Must his life drag on, in the usual way, at bitter emotional expense? Would not early freezing be a true mercy? Some will say that if we freeze all the cretins, there will be no way to study cretinism. Others will go further and say that if we freeze all corpses, the medical students will have no one to slice up in the freshman course in Gross Anatomy. However, there will probably be enough such objectors to save the situation, for surely they will volunteer their carcasses to the medical schools!
The painful problem of deformed and defective children is not one of negligible proportions. According to Jane Gould, "In all, roughly three newborn infants out of a hundred are seriously abnormal." (35) Most of these, of course, will not be considered for early freezing; they will either die early natural deaths, or will be cured, or can be helped to lead lives not too pitifully far from the norm. But consider, for example, the worst cases of cerebral palsy. According to Jessie S. West, in the United States in 1954 there were around a half million victims of this disease. Many had normal intelligence, although the affliction produced symptoms such as facial grimacing, drooling, and unintelligible speech which might make them seem subnormal to an uninformed observer. But many had serious mental deficiencies, and in fact 13 per cent were considered uneducable. (127)
At present, we properly do not countenance euthanasia for this 23 per cent, even though they may be suffering and even though there is a heavy emotional and financial burden on the other members of the family. But will not the situation be different when freezers are available?
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Some will insist that we cannot end life for any reason, let alone for reasons of cost and convenience. But in fact we have always sold lives, and sometimes rather cheaply, in peace as well as in war. Consider, for example, the annual American traffic death toll-around thirty thousand, I think. We could certainly save several thousand of these, merely by doubling the police traffic detail in every city, or by making all vehicles carry speed governors, etc. But we do not want the expense or inconvenience of saving these lives; we make a cold-blooded calculation, and let them die.
Certainly there is an extremely important difference between traffic deaths and mercy killings. In the former case the victims are not known in advance, and we all take our chances. Nevertheless, life does have its price, and the freezers introduce a profoundly important new element.
One cannot evade his responsibility by speaking of "God's will." The failure to act also constitutes a decision. When the judge is pondering the case and searching his soul for right, let him ask this question: if the child were already frozen, and it were within my power to return him to deformed life, would I do so? If the answer is negative, then probably the freezer is where he belongs.
In the new era, the heinousness of the manslayer's crime may depend not only on the motives and circumstances, but also on the degree of damage to the body.
My grandfather used to say there are two kinds of lazy - "lazy" and "stinking lazy." Society may now distinguish between plain murder and sloppy murder. If the victim is doused with gasoline and ignited, or ground up in the garbage disposal, or hidden in a swamp and left for the alligators, this is sloppy murder. But
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if he is merely shot through the heart and quickly found and frozen, then this is a more civilized kind of murder.
The punishment of murder will have to be reviewed. Should it fit the crime? Should one who destroys his victim be himself scattered to the winds? Should one whose victim can be frozen be himself frozen? In those states which do not use capital punishment, can freezing be substituted for life imprisonment in some cases?
Further, a new kind of manslaughter will appear, namely, failure-to-freeze. (As civilization continues its majestic advance, the categories of crime inevitably multiply.) Failure to get a body into a freezer, and failure to service a freezer, will probably count at least as negligent homicide.
In this connection, it is interesting to consider our attitude toward abortion, which is also a kind of cutting off of potential life. Abortion is a crime, but it isn't murder, and no funerals are held. Failure-to-freeze will not be taken as lightly, since the victim is more clearly a person, one who had a name and an identity and leaves a more definite sense of loss.
Freezing also offers an alternative to the abortion dilemma. If there are strong indications favouring abortion, but the people involved have strong feelings against it, possibly they might decide to remove the foetus by a careful operation and freeze it rather than destroy it, so that the potentiality of life remains.)
Making freezing at death compulsory will at first be successfully opposed in the name of individual and religious freedom, somewhat analogously to the claims of certain Christian Scientists and snake-handling cults. But the courts have overridden the religious objections of parents to ensure proper medical care for dangerously ill children, and have allowed the police to interfere with the snake-handlers. Similarly, the relatives of the deceased will be compelled to freeze him.
Suppose an adult of sound mind leaves explicit instructions
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that his remains not be frozen? This case will soon become more hypothetical than real. Before long nearly everyone will see the Golden Age shimmering enchantingly in the distance, and will not dream of relinquishing his ticket. Those that may remain stubbornly skeptical will realize they have nothing to lose: if by some chance they don't like what they see on awakening, they can then destroy themselves, or else climb back into the freezer. In practice, before long the objectors will include only a handful of eccentrics.
Widows, Widowers, and Multiple Marriages
In the Kingdom of Heaven, it is said, there is "neither marriage nor giving in marriage," and of course angels all love one another with indiscriminate determination, so that all the ex- wives and multiple husbands will simply sing in chorus. But on earth the resuscitees may have narrower views, and provision must be made for reunions which may not be entirely blissful.
A common form of the marriage vow says something about "until death do us part." If this be interpreted to mean permanent death, some brides and grooms will surely have second thoughts before promising to spend perhaps thousands of years with the same person. On the other hand, if temporary death is allowed to dissolve a marriage, as at present, and remarriages occur as usual, then many a widow will find herself, after resuscitation, facing two ex-husbands, of whom the less recent, the lover of her youth, is likely to be the dearer.
In a few score years these questions may be meaningless. Who can be sure the institution of monogamy will persist? At present we are thoroughly committed to it, and yet one remembers wryly the moment in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra when a Briton expresses shock at a Roman custom. Caesar, speaking to another Roman, says: "Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and
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thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." Just so; our tribal custom of monogamy is not a law of nature, and may eventually be replaced by . . . what? Perhaps group marriage, or no marriage at all, or marriage determined on a strictly individual basis by contract. With the biological functions and the nature of reproduction itself subject to scrutiny and deliberate change, no one can make a long-range guess with confidence.
A momentary digression here may be useful to point out that the religious notion of "natural law" is by no means so rigid a concept as many Catholic laymen, for instance, seem to believe. George W. Constable, writing in the Natural Law Forum of the Notre Dame Law School, has said: ". . . natural law consensus is not and cannot be static. . . . If the conclusion of one qualified member of society is in conflict with the conclusion of another as to what the natural law is in any given case, then, ex definitione, each is justified in following his own lights. . All are subject to correction, whether priest, king, or democrat." (13)
In the immediate future, some of the problems and their likely remedies are fairly clear.
The first marriage partner to die will leave demands on the survivor not formerly known, demands both emotional and financial. The freezee will want to awaken neither deserted nor impoverished, but to reclaim both his wife and his estate. The wife, on the other hand, may want to inherit everything, and may want to be free to console herself. What to do?
If we are talking about an average couple in the near future, so that the man dies at a moderately advanced age leaving a very modest estate, the result seems clear enough. The widow will be faithful. A decade or so of separation, at an advanced age, is not a high price to pay for emotional security. For the peace of mind of the first to die, this may even be formalized in law;
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under these circumstances, the widow of a freezee may be legally still married, and no more able to obtain a divorce than the wife of someone in an insane asylum.
Some may object that all this concern is unrealistic. After all, the resuscitees will not be the same people; they will be rejuvenated and overhauled, changed and improved (although not necessarily immediately) in physique and personality. The life will be new in a very drastic sense, and there may be no interest at all in the former spouse.
The answer is that there must be a reasonable amount of continuity, or at the very least the anticipation of a reasonable amount of continuity (in personal relations), for otherwise the future would be too frightening altogether, and motivation would tend to evaporate.
Consider next a more difficult case, say where the survivor, even though aged, breathes a sigh of relief, thinking, "Good riddance to the bum! Thank heavens I don't have to put up with him any more." Or consider the case of a husband or wife dying in middle life, leaving dependent children. Notice I say "consider," not "let us consider," because I have already considered them and find myself fresh out of answers. They will just have to be worked out-somehow.
Before leaving this topic, we might mention one possible solution to the problem of the young widow-one not put for- ward very seriously, but intended to remind the reader of the vast scope of the possibilities.
It is suggested by a news item relating that, in 1963, it is possible in Japan for a girl to go to a plastic surgeon, pay a fee of $50 to $100, and get herself a new maidenhead. (48) Her groom is thus spared the embarrassment of learning of her previous indiscretions. The next logical step, one presumes, is for the girl to go to a psychiatrist and have him hypnotically erase the memories associated with the original maidenhead!
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Then she would be a maiden pure in every sense except that of history-and history, as everyone knows since H. Ford I, is hunk.
Our widow, then, makes the following arrangements. On revival, she lives with the second husband until they can separate by mutual consent - perhaps even until they are tired of each other. Only then is the first husband revived, and the wife meanwhile has her brain washed clean of the second husband by psychiatric or biopsychiatric techniques. Admittedly, the scheme in this simple form raises more problems than it solves, but it is only intended to be vaguely suggestive.
Rumour has it that in certain political wards on Chicago's South Side, for example, it is possible by hallowed tradition for a recumbent corpse to be yet an upright citizen, since he retains his place on the roll of eligible voters. Perhaps, in some degree and sense, this custom will come to be fixed by law.
Two well established principles are involved: ". . . nor shall any State . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" (U. S. Constitution) and "no taxation without representation" (Boston Tea Party et seq.). The frozen will be potentially alive; they will be property owners and tax payers. How must the law be modified for proper recognizance of these facts?
At present, our voting laws are for the most part extremely simple-and simple-minded. One competent adult, one vote. Administratively, this is nice and tidy, but logically it is a ghastly mess. The whole area of voting rights and voting weights needs to be reexamined-not merely the question of lowering franchise age to eighteen, as has often been suggested, but the entire philosophy and rationale of representative government.
Should the vote of a man with four children count only as much as
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that of a father of two? The children are people, they have interests which can be furthered or damaged, and they are entitled to representation. Should a well-informed voter swing only as much weight as the emptiest ignoramus? The very purpose of our republican government is to avoid this. Should not voting eligibility and voting weight depend on the specific issue and the degree to which the voter's interests are affected? It is already customary in certain areas for some issues to be voted upon only by property owners.
Perhaps another layer ought to be sandwiched in between the citizens and the legislatures. That is, any group of citizens might be permitted to delegate their votes to a chosen elector, who would be authorized to cast these votes in an election.
In any event, such an overhaul will surely, among other things, recognize the right of incompetents to certain kinds of representation. Incompetents now form a small group, which is ignored in this respect; but the frozen will constitute an enormous body of influence which must be duly recognized and represented.
Potter's Freezer and Umbrellas
For failure to pay the premiums on one's freezer insurance, the death penalty seems a trifle severe. Hence society will be obliged to freeze the indigent. How fine, that the ne'er-do- wells will in the future escape both death and taxes! They will live on The Welfare and, dying, remain on The Welfare. To add insult to injury, on resuscitation they will be just as bright and shiny as the people who paid taxes. Is this justice? Ask me again in a thousand years.
For the further protection of the weak, the lazy, and the unlucky, the inheritance and bankruptcy laws will need working over. I shall not delve into this, except to remark that the quality
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of mercy may be displayed by ruling debts subject to simple interest only, while assets may accumulate compound interest.
Countless other legal problems remain to be first revealed and then handled. And while it is true that the freezer era will be the era of the Golden Rule, the fraternal outlook will become general only gradually, and even then there will be honest differences of interest and opinion. For a considerable period we will have to bear in mind the immortal words of Ferguson Bowen: "The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella."
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