physicians of today call "clinical death." This point was convenient because it not only marked the limit of "viability" (hope of return to normal function), but also because it was associated with ---------------------------------------------------------------------(45)
the religious connotation of breathing as being associated with the presence of the spirit. In the middle of the twentieth century, however, things began to become complicated. Doctors learned how to restart hearts with electrical cardioversion, and CPR and heart-lung machines now began to make it possible to maintain persons for variable lengths of time without any intrinsic heart or ventilatory function at all. Worse still, the concept of "brain death" was found inapplicable to acute situations, because it was found that the diagnosis could only be made in retrospect at a time when the brain had already been almost completely destroyed. Brain death thus did not help in line drawing unless people were satisfied with drawing the line well after the fact. The law did what it could. In California, death was redefined as the "irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory function." Unfortunately the word "irreversible" promised difficulty, since it made the time of death highly variable among individuals whose hearts had stopped, and also because the diagnosis of death in theory could not be made for some time after clinical death without an attempt at resuscitation which was inappropriate for many people (folks with terminal illnesses, etc.) Thus, the California law was widely ignored by physicians, who continued to pronounce people (whom they did not wish to resuscitate) dead when their hearts stopped, just as they had always done.
Cryonics The danger inherent in the above state of things ought to be apparent to any cryonicist. Although legal lines may be initially drawn somewhat arbitrarily, they do have the virtue of being easily identified and complied with-indeed that is their purpose. But where a line is not clearly drawn in a process which itself is murky, the law becomes worse than useless. The word "irreversible" implies a functional definition of "death" and a functional test. You can't tell if function is "irreversible" in many instances unless you try to reverse it! If the test (attempted resuscitation) is not done, it is impossible to imagine how one is to tell the legal status of anyone for a very long time after their hearts have stopped. This being the case, the matter of when to prosecute for suspected violations of law in this area would seem to be completely arbitrary. A well known method of social control is to pass laws with such a structure as to guarantee universal violation, then enforce them selectively against undesirables. Although physicians involved in standard medical practice may never be prosecuted for violation of the law's new definition of death (though in violation of it every day), it is entirely possible that physicians (and nonphysicians) involved in cryonics may be.