>From: Robert Bradbury <bradbury@genebee.msu.su>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: Cryonics and organ donation
>Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 16:16:08 -0400 (EDT)
>
>
>On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Sarah Marr wrote:
>
> > There are two things I need to do: sign up for cryonic suspension and
>get
> > an organ donor card. I can do the latter today, and the former in a few
> > years, when/if I'm earning money. So, the question is: how compatible is
> > organ donation with cryonics?
>
>Sarah, if you are young, the cost of term life insurance (for say 10 years)
>is *very* cheap, probably a few $ a month. Well worth investigating
>as a cryonics "safety-net" until you are earning money. The question
>to ask yourself is whether your life is worth one or two movies a month?
>
Sarah, if you want to be frozen after legal death (cryonics), you DON'T want
to be an organ donor. As I understand it, in order to be an organ donor, you
have to be in a certain medical condition with respect to your brain waves.
This may require that a certain period of time pass after you stop
breathing, or something to that effect; in any event, I have heard cryonics
honchos such as Mike Darwin and/or Brian Wowk say that being an organ donor
may well ruin your chances to get a good freeze.
Also, if you want to be a cryo, you do not want term life insurance. You
want whole life insurance. With term life, you pay for 20 to 30 years.
During that time period if you die, your beneficiary will get paid (the cryo
org, in this case). After 20 or 30 years (most term is 20 years, but no
longer than 30--and you must pay continuously during those 20-30 years,
AFAIK) your term life insurance is kaput. So if you were to die more than 20
to 30 years from when you buy the insurance, you are out of luck--no freeze.
Plus, at that age, it will be much harder to get life insurance; you may not
be able to get life insurance at all. So there you are at 55 years of age or
thereabouts, with no death benefit life insurance, and you may well be
uninsurable. That's Bad!
So, then what you want is called whole/universal/flexible life. This pays a
death benefit no matter when you die, tomorrow, or 100 years from now.
Also, you build equity with whole life. You can stop making payments after
10-15 years because the accrued equity pays enough interest to make your
payment.
Case closed, then: No organ donor & whole life :^)
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