These autopsy cases are horrible. I would note, however, that Alcor has had quite a bit of success in persuading MEs and coroners to limit or omit destructive autopsies. I remember a case in the 2010s of a member in Phoenix area who died of uncertain causes alone. He had no known friends or relatives in the area. I went down to the Medical Examiner's office with an attorney and plead with them. They would not promise anything. A few hours later, they released the person after nothing more than an external exam.
In other cases, we have been able to get them to do a "virtual autopsy" -- a CT scan to look for trauma and a toxicology panel. There was even a suicide case in Alabama when the member was released to Alcor because the cause of death was clear and the person had left ample evidence of their intent. (He carefully shot himself in the chest, leaving his brain undamaged.)
Obviously, there are reasons for autopsies but, for people planning on biostasis, no moral hazard risk outweighs the terminal damage of autopsy.
Thanks for recounting those experiences, super interesting. I imagine that in-person pleading from a family member and/or member of an organization is probably the most likely thing to work.
Fantastic post Andy. We really have to keep highlighting these tragic cases, ideally at ME and Organ Donation Conferences. Most norms change only when challenged.
It does not delete all possibilities for future reanimation, but it makes the complexity of the task exponentially more complicated. Most important, is even if the "mortalists" cut your brain into six sections in their strange death science rituals of their belief, science doesn't give a f^&k what they believe. We must cryopreserve or chemo-preserve and data scan what they will leave us for future technology to rebuild with. Life is stronger than death. Information is the most important existential aspect of existing in beingness as part of life's reality. We preserve the information of the neuro-connectome to the optimum we can manage for anyone within our scientific industrial means because the premium social-economic value is the matured self-aware human-kind intelligent life form. That is the solid gold of the social economy in this solar system wide web and beyond. Eventually, advanced artificial super intelligence with bioinformatic analytics will be able to back-trace your total DNA structure from the trace present in your living descendants to a very exact accuracy. Even the ones who insist on their belief about absolute realness of death, will eventually be possible to rebuild and reanimate from social-psychology record and DNA data analytics. For all practical purposes using Information Theory Section methods in the IEEE, it can be hypothesized that every one of the 33 billion human-kind neuro-connectomes in the natural history of Earth can be rebuilt and to some substantial measure reanimated very nearly exactly to themselves again for further social-economic experience helping establish biospheres of evolving biological life in more locations through this solar system as we eventually devise the way to deploy life-establishment modules to early solar systems in our region of this galaxy to help spread evolving growing learning life to new locations. As it was done for us, we will for those after us in this ongoing process of passing on the blessings of the source of Life.
Prof. Newell, I applaud your optimism but I don't share it entirely. Both the past and future are never fully computable to finite systems, no matter their complexity. The more past diversity we can successfully preserve, the better we can know our present reality and future possibilities.
You honor me with thoughtful response, and I appreciate you very much. I admit without shame that I am an optimist. But I do not presume much from this. Information Theory is rapidly applying into information science technology daily right now, but it certainly does not guarantee things. It's just that often I see behavior and words as others intellectually wax sanguine about the 2nd law of entropy and the universal outcome of death like what they lean toward in subjective human feelings of belief is more "scientific" than my approach. So then, it is not implied that less priority be placed on doing what we can such that anything is assumed to be fail-safe protected as if fully computable. Nothing I would mean to address is meant to imply disagreement with your insight: "The more past diversity we can preserve, the better we can know our present reality and future possibilities." My optimism comes from decades of biology study and realizing life began on Earth almost as soon as water was flowing on the surface of the planet, and both amino acids and "One of the four nucleobases of RNA has been discovered in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu..." I guess my "minority report" would be that I live in a galaxy where even within the immediate domain of this solar system the small number of raw material samples from space show the presence of the building blocks of biological life abound. As a practical matter, factual information rapidly expands in a specific way giving well more room to the working hypothesis our biology on Earth is not an isolated event in this galaxy let along this solar system, and the total spectrum of what is yet to be discovered about the systems of biological life yields enough content that my optimism is not less science than that of the skilled Medical Examiner in my County government. The Immortalist Society is not silly science. Being an optimist is not being silly. But I know if it sounds like I'm happily confident then I misspeak. I am not more certain. I just see I have room to feel valid continuing my own research and applications with my tasks in my field with this science. Members of my immediate family are resolved to facilitate my cremation upon death even though my patents and lifelong research and fully paid membership is in the Immortalist Society where I have arranged as much funding to cryonic brain preservation and contract as I can, and yet risk remains in state laws and dogmatic religion in family that oppose my optimism as silly science. I know I may be turned to ashes and dust with affirming prayers of that outcome in religions of family around me in this life, but even still I affirm a possibility greater than these "pragmatic minded and existential realists" speak almost daily in their lives. It is only at the story moment of the three-day rotted crucifixion corpse, that the abstract quest for meaning seems fully apparent to those following the story line. But it is not silly science to reply, life is stronger than death. There is almost every season more scientific fact to support it is not silly to be an optimist about this direction of work and research essays. I think without meaning I could really say I'm sure about it, or anything is a guarantee, that still the indication of what is in this direction is a solid indication. And that is my emphasis, but not a promise. Also, my practice in life will always be, that I reserve the right to change my mind about anything, given the general reality of a universe of this size. There's a lot to know around here. Even if humans fix it to live thousands of years, there's still a lot yet to know and we're only just scratching the surface in so many ways. It's my honor to review this and respectfully and most humbly reply with many thanks.
These autopsy cases are horrible. I would note, however, that Alcor has had quite a bit of success in persuading MEs and coroners to limit or omit destructive autopsies. I remember a case in the 2010s of a member in Phoenix area who died of uncertain causes alone. He had no known friends or relatives in the area. I went down to the Medical Examiner's office with an attorney and plead with them. They would not promise anything. A few hours later, they released the person after nothing more than an external exam.
In other cases, we have been able to get them to do a "virtual autopsy" -- a CT scan to look for trauma and a toxicology panel. There was even a suicide case in Alabama when the member was released to Alcor because the cause of death was clear and the person had left ample evidence of their intent. (He carefully shot himself in the chest, leaving his brain undamaged.)
Obviously, there are reasons for autopsies but, for people planning on biostasis, no moral hazard risk outweighs the terminal damage of autopsy.
Thanks for recounting those experiences, super interesting. I imagine that in-person pleading from a family member and/or member of an organization is probably the most likely thing to work.
Fantastic post Andy. We really have to keep highlighting these tragic cases, ideally at ME and Organ Donation Conferences. Most norms change only when challenged.
It does not delete all possibilities for future reanimation, but it makes the complexity of the task exponentially more complicated. Most important, is even if the "mortalists" cut your brain into six sections in their strange death science rituals of their belief, science doesn't give a f^&k what they believe. We must cryopreserve or chemo-preserve and data scan what they will leave us for future technology to rebuild with. Life is stronger than death. Information is the most important existential aspect of existing in beingness as part of life's reality. We preserve the information of the neuro-connectome to the optimum we can manage for anyone within our scientific industrial means because the premium social-economic value is the matured self-aware human-kind intelligent life form. That is the solid gold of the social economy in this solar system wide web and beyond. Eventually, advanced artificial super intelligence with bioinformatic analytics will be able to back-trace your total DNA structure from the trace present in your living descendants to a very exact accuracy. Even the ones who insist on their belief about absolute realness of death, will eventually be possible to rebuild and reanimate from social-psychology record and DNA data analytics. For all practical purposes using Information Theory Section methods in the IEEE, it can be hypothesized that every one of the 33 billion human-kind neuro-connectomes in the natural history of Earth can be rebuilt and to some substantial measure reanimated very nearly exactly to themselves again for further social-economic experience helping establish biospheres of evolving biological life in more locations through this solar system as we eventually devise the way to deploy life-establishment modules to early solar systems in our region of this galaxy to help spread evolving growing learning life to new locations. As it was done for us, we will for those after us in this ongoing process of passing on the blessings of the source of Life.
Prof. Newell, I applaud your optimism but I don't share it entirely. Both the past and future are never fully computable to finite systems, no matter their complexity. The more past diversity we can successfully preserve, the better we can know our present reality and future possibilities.
You honor me with thoughtful response, and I appreciate you very much. I admit without shame that I am an optimist. But I do not presume much from this. Information Theory is rapidly applying into information science technology daily right now, but it certainly does not guarantee things. It's just that often I see behavior and words as others intellectually wax sanguine about the 2nd law of entropy and the universal outcome of death like what they lean toward in subjective human feelings of belief is more "scientific" than my approach. So then, it is not implied that less priority be placed on doing what we can such that anything is assumed to be fail-safe protected as if fully computable. Nothing I would mean to address is meant to imply disagreement with your insight: "The more past diversity we can preserve, the better we can know our present reality and future possibilities." My optimism comes from decades of biology study and realizing life began on Earth almost as soon as water was flowing on the surface of the planet, and both amino acids and "One of the four nucleobases of RNA has been discovered in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu..." I guess my "minority report" would be that I live in a galaxy where even within the immediate domain of this solar system the small number of raw material samples from space show the presence of the building blocks of biological life abound. As a practical matter, factual information rapidly expands in a specific way giving well more room to the working hypothesis our biology on Earth is not an isolated event in this galaxy let along this solar system, and the total spectrum of what is yet to be discovered about the systems of biological life yields enough content that my optimism is not less science than that of the skilled Medical Examiner in my County government. The Immortalist Society is not silly science. Being an optimist is not being silly. But I know if it sounds like I'm happily confident then I misspeak. I am not more certain. I just see I have room to feel valid continuing my own research and applications with my tasks in my field with this science. Members of my immediate family are resolved to facilitate my cremation upon death even though my patents and lifelong research and fully paid membership is in the Immortalist Society where I have arranged as much funding to cryonic brain preservation and contract as I can, and yet risk remains in state laws and dogmatic religion in family that oppose my optimism as silly science. I know I may be turned to ashes and dust with affirming prayers of that outcome in religions of family around me in this life, but even still I affirm a possibility greater than these "pragmatic minded and existential realists" speak almost daily in their lives. It is only at the story moment of the three-day rotted crucifixion corpse, that the abstract quest for meaning seems fully apparent to those following the story line. But it is not silly science to reply, life is stronger than death. There is almost every season more scientific fact to support it is not silly to be an optimist about this direction of work and research essays. I think without meaning I could really say I'm sure about it, or anything is a guarantee, that still the indication of what is in this direction is a solid indication. And that is my emphasis, but not a promise. Also, my practice in life will always be, that I reserve the right to change my mind about anything, given the general reality of a universe of this size. There's a lot to know around here. Even if humans fix it to live thousands of years, there's still a lot yet to know and we're only just scratching the surface in so many ways. It's my honor to review this and respectfully and most humbly reply with many thanks.