I’ve been remiss in not covering the Ted Williams cryonics situation, because it’s a subject in which I have a deep interest and more knowledge than most, including, I suspect, most bloggers. I’ll try to stay on top of it better when I get back to California next week, but in the meantime, I just wanted to comment on this latest story from the National Post’s sports section. Now the daughter is pleading with President Bush and former Senator Glenn to intercede on her behalf (though what the legal basis would be for them to do so is unclear to me).

For those few who have been on another planet this past week, baseball legend Ted Williams died a few days ago. Apparently either he or his son had made arrangements for him to be cryonically suspended–that is, his body has been frozen in the hopes that some future technology advances will be able to cure what ailed him, and to undo the even more severe damage caused by the cryonics process itself, allowing him to once again stride the earth, and smell the roses, and maybe even once again hit balls out of the park.

The son claims that this was Mr. Williams wish. His half sister, Ted Williams’ daughter, claims that it wasn’t at all his desire–that he wanted to be cremated and have the ashes scattered over the Florida Keys. Mr. Williams himself is unable to weigh in on the matter, being many degrees below room temperature and, legally at least, dead.

As is usually the case in such stories, the reporting has been appalling, confusing, and confused. As always, many refuse to use the term “cryonics,” instead using the incorrect term “cryogenics,” which is simply the scientific and engineering field of low-temperature phenomena. And the back story is missing in action in most cases, so I’ll try to fill the gap a little here.

Cryonics is often, and mistakenly, lumped in with UFOlogy, ESP and other pseudoscience, but it actually has a very sound scientific and philosophical conceptual basis.

Most people think of death as an objective, unambiguous, and verifiable condition. But in fact, it’s a legal fiction, and its declaration is simply function based and arbitrary. It’s also based on the knowledge level and location of the personnel making the declaration.

For instance, a hundred years ago, a simple cessation of breathing (perhaps after drowning) would have been sufficient to declare death, though today such people are often resuscitated through simple CPR, and go on to live many more years. More recently, the lack of heart function was sufficient, though we now routinely stop hearts for cardiac surgery. The current medical standard (in most jurisdictions, which indicates again that it’s a legal standard, and not an objective scientific one) is a flat line on an electroencephalogram (EEG), indicating no brain function. But there’s no reason to believe that this is any ultimate indicator either–it may be possible in the future to revive people who have gone flat line (and in fact, this may already be the case now–I haven’t done a recent literature search).

For these reasons, cryonicists don’t accept a function-based definition of death. Instead, they propose something called information death. This is defined as the point at which, no matter what the level of conceivable future technological capability, it is no longer possible to repair the body to the point that it can be revived, with original memories and personality. Even this definition represents a continuum, rather than a binary condition, because most of us walking around now have lost or altered some of their earlier memories. But it’s a much more promising, and valid, definition for the purposes of offering a chance at future revival.

As an example of the difference between structural damage and information death, consider that a book that has been cut up into pieces, or even shredded, could be reconstructed by a patient and talented puzzle solver, and still have the same information value as the original. But a book that has been burned, and had its ashes scattered, is irretrievable by any technology short of time travel.

All of this discussion, of course, presumes a materialist perspective–that the living body, including personality and consciousness, is the emergent property of the machinery that composes it. If one believes in an evanescent immaterial “soul,” without which the body, even if living, is a zombie of some kind, then it doesn’t work, but there’s no scientific reason to believe this to be the case, so from at least a scientific perspective, cryonics should work, in theory.

So from this viewpoint, if Mr. Williams was adequately preserved upon his legal declaration of death, he is not in fact information dead, but is rather still alive. And thus his son is saving his life (putting him in an ambulance to the future, so to speak) whereas the daughter is trying, in her ignorance, to kill him. That’s because one can’t be more dead from an information standpoint than to burn the remains, converting them to illegible carbon molecules and scattering them.

That’s what makes this quote from the article above interesting:

Ferrell said she and her husband, Mark, had known for a year about John Henry Williams’ desire to have their father’s body sent to the cryonics lab after he died.

“It is unfortunate that I have been put into a corner to fight for what is right and for my father’s final wishes,” she said in the letter. “I too am on a final mission to save ‘Ted Williams.”‘

Of course, from a cryonicist’s point of view, what she is doing is exactly the opposite of “saving” her father, by any rational definition of that word. She is, in fact, attempting to ensure that it will be impossible to save him. I suspect that she is doing this out of some version of Leon Kass’ “yuck” criterion for moral probity. She’s uncomfortable with the thought of her father’s body being frozen, perhaps for religious reasons, or perhaps simply because it’s unconventional. She probably doesn’t believe that he will ever be revivable, or perhaps she doesn’t believe that he should be revived even if it’s possible, again, for irrational emotional reasons.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing things for irrational emotional reasons per se, but a man’s potential life is at issue here. If it were my decision, I’d have everyone suspended, because the cost of doing so isn’t that much more than standard methods of interment (particularly if it were a common practice), and I grieve the loss of sources of consciousness to the universe under all circumstances, unless they are malevolent.

But the ultimate arbiter should be the wishes of Mr. Williams. And it’s very difficult to tell what that was from the reportage to date.

Normally, Alcor (the cryonics organization to whom he has at least temporarily been entrusted) likes to avoid these kinds of disputes, for obvious reasons. It’s bad business, and bad publicity, to have to thaw and destroy a patient that they’ve accepted. They encourage prospective customers to get permission from their families, if possible, and when it’s not, or even when it has been gained, to make their wishes very clear, in a lucid and compelling manner, in writing and video.

If Mr. Williams signed up for the procedure himself, and can be shown to be of sound mind when he did so, and not coerced by his son, then the daughter will be out of luck–she won’t be able to kill her father under the mistaken guise of “saving” him.

If he didn’t sign up himself, but was signed up by his son, then it may be more problematic. In the absence of any clear indication of Mr. Williams’ wishes, it will simply become “he said, she said,” in which he will claim that Mr. Williams did want to attempt to extend his life into the future, and she will claim that he wanted his ashes dissipated over the Keys.

It wouldn’t surprise me in either case that they are simply expressing their own wishes for their father, rather than attempting to follow out his own. I can easily imagine that the daughter’s feelings are sufficiently strong as to lie about his desires, so finding corraborating witnesses on both sides will be critical. Similarly, if the son really was talking about selling Ted Williams DNA for cloning or other purposes, it will damage his case in the public mind, and make Alcor unhappy, because that isn’t the business that they’re in. They don’t want to preserve DNA–they want to preserve persons. Of course, if she’s lying about Mr. Williams’s wishes, she could be lying about this as well, to discredit her brother and bolster her own case.

It will be an interesting legal situation, but it’s not (at least yet) about the theoretical validity, practical effectivity, or ethics of cryonics–it’s really just a simple probate case.

But my concern will be if President Bush or Senator Glenn actually do attempt to do something to help her. If that means making cryonics illegal, that will be both scary (if it succeeds) and interesting. I’m afraid that the Yuck Factor will once again come into play, and that the rational discussion on the subject will be minimal. British Columbia already has a law on the books outlawing this form of human preservation, and I hope that the same doesn’t come to pass anywhere in the US, let alone in the entire country. When it becomes illegal to freeze people, or to extend their lives, then only outlaws will be frozen.

The notion that any Supreme Court would find such a law constitutional is disturbing, for what can be a more basic human right, for someone who has committed no crime other than to be born, than to live?

[Update shortly after posting]

I see that Jay Manifold has already found, and responded to, a Christian argument (and an utterly inadequate one, even from a Christian perspective, in his and my view) against cryopreservation. And like many opponents of cloning, the concern is not that it won’t work, but it will.