This TED talk on suspended animation by Mark Roth captivated me when I first saw it last year, and I have been eagerly trying to follow developments on the subject ever since.
My question for the lesswrong crowd is, if suspended animation were available today in such a way that you could "skip" years, decades or even centuries in a de-animated state while not aging or aging only slightly, would you go for it? Would it be the rational thing to do, or would it be more rational to wait until you really needed it, for example, when you are nearing end of life or if you get diagnosed with an incurable, terminal... (read 189 more words →)
At the very least, opposition to assisted suicide + cryo for the terminally ill seems like it would be very hard to defend.
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?