Two possible suggestions could be coherently made involving the use of premortem cryonics for people who legitimately prefer to be dead rather than go on living in their current state:
The two positions are fundamentally distinct and optimize for different outcomes.
In the first case, the main concern is the potential research material that goes to waste every time someone kills themselves under uncontrolled circumstances. It does not concern itself with the possibility of preserving the individual patient, and focuses instead on the utilitarian gains that improving the state of the art in cryonics would bring for others.
In the second case, the main concern is the lives that are directly wasted due to people killing themselves off for good when in reality they would be fine with cryonics, and their preferences are not insistent on death. This argument does not concern itself with improving the state of the art, but is concerned with the ongoing and potentially preventable loss of life from suicide.
Either loss -- the individual life, or research that could radically extend lots of lives -- is a tragic one which could perhaps be avoided, if premortem cryonics were permitted by society. However, the two arguments have different strengths and weaknesses which make them hard to use.
The first makes no assumption about whether cryonics currently achieves its objectives, only that the lives of people who are committing suicide would have some use for research that might improve cryonics. On the other hand, it relies on the moral notion that people who want to commit suicide should in fact be free to do so, and that research scientists who actively participate in that event are not in some way morally tainted, threatening the basis of civilization, or otherwise losing more than they gain by doing so.
(In case it's not already completely obvious to everyone, I'll spell it out: The humane advantages from perfecting cryogenic suspended animation technology in humans would be HUGE, as it would bring an immediate end to death from every disease and buy many decades of pain-free time for patients to have their illnesses cured.)
The second relies on the notion that cryonics patients are not actually dead in the sense that we are worried about, that cryonics is better thought of as an alternative to suicide, and so forth. Instead of simply being dead, the patient is accepting a risk of being dead when all is said and done. This becomes a question of risk tradeoffs -- the risk that you will kill yourself during a future depressive episode and/or die of aging, versus the risk that cryonics doesn't work.
The main problem though is that if you don't have an audience with a fairly sophisticated grasp on transhumanism and utilitarianism already, and a respect for the chances of cryonics working already, they are going to be mindkilled pretty quickly by the apparent endorsement of taking advantage of suicidally depressed people.
I agree with your reasoning on the presentation of those arguments towards the benefit of using premortem cryonics for the suicidal.
If worded well enough, we could incorporate both when the idea circulates among the masses, but it would have to be very carefully done. The second argument would most likely be more effective on the general populace, as it has more of a touchy-feely we care about the individual sound, whereas the first is very much about utilitarianism and those with little understanding of that mindset would consider it to be ‘cold’ (no pun ...
Here is my understanding - correct me if I'm wrong:
Cryonics is only allowed once a person is determined legally dead: when the heart stops beating.
One of the reasons why they have to be dead seems to be that the majority of the population consider cryonics to be a death-sentence, as there is no guarantee at this time that subjects can be revived - regardless of if there's a cure for whatever ailment caused a person's death.
It is difficult at this time to improve the revitalizing process as the patients - or clients - are incapable of surviving as their body was already in the process of shutting down, and we do not have the technology to bring them fully back.
Now, to some conjecturing.
We might be able to more reasonably test the effectiveness of procedures to revive current patients if we had healthier people, ones not yet at death's door.
Here's where the ethical dilemma hits home: we could use people who are in good health, here defined as 'not terminally-ill or otherwise dying from health complications in the near future,' who are already intending to end their life. Simply stated, those who are suicidal.
For all intensive purposes they would cease to exist, which would be part of the appeal to that subgroup. At this time there is a probability of them dying from the procedure, which should be ok as they were self-destructing anyway. And if they don't die, they get the chance to reflect on their life or go at it again. In this way their death would be more beneficial to the whole.
The benefits to this would be the additional research into the effects of cryonics on the body and how to develop a procedure to guarantee that you CAN be revived once put under.
I am aware of a couple of problems: legal complications, how to find willing participants, etc., and am thinking of ways to resolve that.
I've just been thinking about this for the past week or so and wanted additional insight. Thoughts?
***On Suicide
For those opposed to suicide: this idea does not encourage people to kill themselves. Rather, it provides those who are already intent upon ending their existence a means to do so more honorably.
In case people have not read it, I recommend Schopenhauer's Essay on Suicide, found here: http://www.egs.edu/library/arthur-schopenhauer/articles/essays-of-schopenhauer/on-suicide/