With the inevitable end in sight – and with the cancer continuing to spread throughout her brain – Kim made the brave choice to refuse food and fluids. Even so, it took around 11 days before her body stopped functioning. Around 6:00 am on Thursday January 17, 2013, Alcor was alerted that Kim had stopped breathing. Because Kim’s steadfast boyfriend and family had located Kim just a few minutes away from Alcor, Medical Response Director Aaron Drake arrived almost immediately, followed minutes later by Max More, then two well-trained Alcor volunteers. As soon as a hospice nurse had pronounced clinical death, we began our standard procedures. Stabilization, transport, surgery, and perfusion all went smoothly. A full case report will be forthcoming.
Embalming is done for aesthetic, emotional, or possibly religious reasons. Autopsy is done to gather empirical data about the patient (for example, establishing cause of death). Surgery is done for the purpose of keeping the patient alive.
Of these three, at least given intent as the main consideration, a cryonics procedure designed to induce vitrification of the brain (or, failing that, a lesser cryoprotected state) falls more under the category of surgery than either of the others. Probable outcome can be thought of separately, but all it takes is a successful argument in court to establish legally that the patient will probably, or at least with some reasonable and relevant level of plausibility, recover from vitrification.
Intent itself does carry legal weight (in my understanding at least -- culpability for damages, degrees of homicide, etc), so the mere fact that cryopreservation implies strong intent of keeping the patient alive could easily count for something, even in the absence of an explicit judgement regarding likelihood of success. (Nonetheless I would not consider the argument having a snowball's chance of succeeding in court without a decent case for plausibility, hence my emphasis on vitrification.)
In the event that a court decides to recognize this difference in intent (and/or probable outcome) as significant, there could be profound consequences. Premortem cryonics could be effectively legalized by judicial fiat, and yet providers might still fear to do it on legally living patients despite the legality (and extreme medical advisability) due to the chance of malpractice suit from a grieving or vengeful family.
Specially crafted laws are probably needed to make sure that this can be done without undue burden on providers or undue risk to patients, clearly delineating responsibilities and liabilities. Other issues like life insurance payments (an important source of cryonics funding at this time), dissolution of debts and contracts, inheritance
http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2716
Previously on LW: Aug 18, Aug 25, Aug 27, Jan 22.