The province of British Columbia enacted a law prohibiting the marketing of cryonics 24 years ago. Canadian cryonicists have been quietly lobbying since then to have this prejudicial law overturned, without success. Cryopreservation at the time of legal death is a personal choice that many people make about the disposition of their remains. Although the lawmakers that wrote this law claim that it is to protect the public from a cryonics organization claiming to be able to revive patients, in fact no such promise is made. Cryonics is based on solid scientific principles and is very clear that it is dependent on evolving technologies to bring it's goals to fruition. It is time we called attention to this civil rights issue, and challenged a law that is anti-science and not in line with our rapidly evolving world.
What we aim to do is to offer a legitimate challenge to this law, in court, on the basis that it impinges on our right to choice, and to provide choices to the public. Religious institutions are permitted to make promises of what may happen after death, and aren't found to be fraudulent. We are simply asking to be able to offer the public an alternate point of view that is secular, and based on the simple belief that science will improve, and what we cannot accomplish today may become routine practice tomorrow.
My name is Christine Gaspar. I am a registered nurse with a background in emergency medicine. I am also an cryonics activist. I am the president of the Cryonics Society of Canada and have advocated for cryopreservation to the media and to individuals since 2003. I have been an active cryonicist since 1998.
Cryonics is based on the idea that our identities, memories, and sense of self are created by the connections within our brain. Preserve those connections and that delicate structure, and you preserve the essence of what it is to be alive. Evidence within the medical community demonstrates that death is not a singular event- an "on/ off" switch. Rather it is a process of cellular destruction that occurs over minutes and hours. We consider a person as having died when the damage to them passes a point in which we can no longer bring them back with modern medical techniques. Advances in CPR, defibrillation, surgery and medication have been incrementally extending and delaying that grey area of death, and one day, we may even be able to overcome it altogether. Most recently, medical practice in the modern world has begun to utilize hypothermia to aid these life saving efforts as it has been demonstrated that cold temperatures slow the rate in which cells and tissue are destroyed, opening that window of possibility even further. Based on historical evidence, medicine is constantly in a state of development, as new discoveries are made every day. What was considered a death sentence a decade or two ago is often now regarded as a serious affliction, with a cure or repair. Before CPR was invented, when one's heartbeat or breathing would stop, the science of the day simply gave up. Today, we routinely return a patient in cardiac arrest back to vibrant health.
The purpose of cryonics is to cool a person at the point of legal death in an effort to stop further damage from occurring. That person is cooled to a very low temperature, and kept protected in storage in the hopes that they will reach a day when medicine will be able to repair what is considered impossible today. Cryonics is a speculative endeavour, and all of us know that this day may never come. There are no guarantees. People who sign up for cryonics tend to believe that the effort is worth it- that any effort is better than the alternative, which is to be given up on, buried or cremated and ending any chance of revival.
There are organizations in existence that offer cryopreservation in the USA, Australia and Russia. What we as Canadians are lacking, is the cryonics equivalent of paramedics. When a patient is declared dead, every minute of delay worsens the prospect of a quality cryopreservation. In areas removed from the continental USA, patients are often left with well meaning volunteers or family to initiate their protocols, when truly, professional services would radically improve their outcome. Biostasis Canada would offer such a service. Canada is a very large country with distant pockets of active cryonicists. The business model that would work best would be to have a small core of professionals that would train these groups of volunteers to initiate a cryonics procedure, then the professionals would join them at the bedside to coordinate and deploy full field vitrification to stabilize the patient for transport to the facility of their choice.
There is a second reason why Biostasis Canada needs to exist. There is a law in British Columbia that prohibits the marketing of cryonics. Biostasis Canada wishes to pose a constitutional challenge to this discriminatory law, presenting it in a legal challenge in the courts as a human rights violation. People have the right to choose the final disposition of their remains. To prohibit a practice that makes it very clear that it's efforts are speculative, and in no way tries to make unfounded promises to the public is discriminatory and sets a precedent that is anti-science and anti progress. The future is coming quickly, with it's promise of marvellous technology. It is wrong to say that reversible cryopreservation is impossible, and can never ever find success.
The amount of money that we are campaigning for is to create an organization that can operate for three years. It takes into account the potential costs of a start-up and the costs of the inevitable battle in British Columbia. Once we are successful in establishing this operation, we will be a fee-for-service organization and hope to become liquid on our own. Please don't let the amount we are asking for discourage you. Any funds raised will be put to good work supporting our mission.
Any cryonics infrastructure that we create we will gladly share with other groups, and assist them to the best of our ability in building their own support, in their respective countries. We will be publishing a field manual that will be offered free to anyone that donates more than $100 CAD.
Please help us realize this ground-breaking and pioneering mission.
