I don't believe Pratchett signed up for cryonics, but if he had, what good argument could there be for not letting him commit assisted suicide in the way that best prepared his body for cryopreservation, followed by immediate cryopreservation?
If medical science admittedly can't do anything for these people other than offering palliative care, it seems like from a sanctity of human life perspective, cryopreservation under optimal conditions at least offers a chance to preserve the life that assisted suicide opponents hold to be so sacred. Maybe rather than repealing laws against assisted suicide, we could work towards getting exemptions for cryopreservation?
Would be bad for cryonics. Assisted suicide opponents would scream "Cryonics gives people false hope so they can kill themselves!". People with bad but solvable problems would be more likely to choose suicide + cryo, as opposed to solving their problems (also as opposed to regular suicide, so it's unsure which is sadder - but the opposition would see the extra expected deaths more than the prevented ones).
At the very least, opposition to assisted suicide + cryo for the terminally ill seems like it would be very hard to defend.
But then assisted suicide proponents could scream "See, it's doesn't have to actually be suicide. It can be turned into a futuristic medical treatment.". Also, it's possible that attitudes toward assisted suicide and potential attitudes towards cryonics are correlated -- people who are strongly against assisted suicide would oppose cryonics anyway so associating the concepts wouldn't hurt cryonics that much.
Besides, there's always the option of arranging cryosuspension discreetly and avoid any PR implications. Or isn't that feasible at all?
Okay if it involves brain degenerescence, but for most diseases, assisted suicide + cryo makes survival less likely than hanging on as long as possible + cryo. Also, there's a slippery slope from Alzheimer's patients getting frozen before their brain melts away, to terminal cancer patients getting frozen sooner than they absolutely must, to depressed patients getting frozen en masse rather than attempt treatment. Cryonics is the second-worst thing that can happen to you.
arranging cryosuspension discreetly and avoid any PR implications
Black swan. If anybody finds out, there'll be a huge scandal.
Besides, there's always the option of arranging cryosuspension discreetly and avoid any PR implications. Or isn't that feasible at all?
Shush! It's getting less so the more you talk about it.
what good argument could there be for not letting him commit assisted suicide in the way that best prepared his body for cryopreservation, followed by immediate cryopreservation?
None that I know of; I'd fully support that, particularly considering he has Alzheimer's. Best to preserve a brain while it's still relatively intact rather than waiting for a natural death at which point it would have deteriorated much further.
To the best of my knowledge, countries which allow assisted suicide frown upon cryopreservation, and vice-versa. Many places also require autopsies for suicides; I'm not sure whether that applies to the assisted ones.
I vaguely remember some LessWrong users talking about contacting Pratchett and informing him about the possibility of cryopreservation. Did anyone try?
Since he's already been afflicted with Alzheimer's for some time, if he were going to have himself cryopreserved, it would have been better to do so much earlier.
True, but unless I'm misunderstanding how such things are regulated in Britain, he still can't have himself preserved until he's been declared dead, and MixedNuts has already addressed the issues with committing assisted suicide and then having himself preserved.
He isn't killing himself in Britain, and your comment doesn't make sense even if it is difficult or impossible to be preserved following a suicide. Best case its a moot point.
This is sad. :(
The most recent Discworld book, Unseen Academicals, was one of my favorites... as far as I can tell, he still writes as well as he ever did.
Really? I felt that it was a considerable step down, and noticed what I considered to be a deterioration in the quality of the series since even before he received the diagnosis (when I found out I was sad but unsurprised.)
Considering that Nation stood out from the trend I noticed in this work though, it might be that he's struggling to deal with an overworked setting rather than losing his skills, and I suggested as much when I wrote a review for a friend's livejournal community.
Nation seemed very far from his usual style to me. It surprised me that he included mysticism in a book that was supposedly set in the real world, and I thought that it was a lot darker and less funny than he usually is.
Well, it didn't surprise me that he included mysticism in a book that was supposedly set in the real world (or rather, an alternate real world with a slightly different geography and somewhat different history than ours which somehow ended up having Richard Dawkins in it anyway,) because he's written a number of non-Discworld books set in the real world and all of those have also had mystical elements in them.
I felt like he didn't try as hard to make Nation funny, but the humor, while less concentrated, felt fresher to me. It seems to me that my perception of the quality of the Discworld books started to deteriorate because Pratchett was struggling to find things to put in his new Discworld books that he hadn't already put into the older ones in some form.
Bill Watterson stopped doing Calvin and Hobbes while it was still popular because he felt he had run out of stuff to say with it, and didn't want it to become stale. Maybe if he had kept on writing it, he could have continued to turn out Calvin and Hobbes strips which would seem brilliant to people who were new to the comic, but the new strips would seem boring to the people who had already read the old ones. When I read Nation, I felt like the Discworld series had started to head in that direction, but Pratchett still had more to say through another setting.
http://blastr.com/2011/06/terry-pratchett-begins-fo.php
Another great mind that will be needlessly lost forever. :(