(This article originally appeared in the 2014 August Issue of Cryonics Magazine at Alcor)
In 1990, the first law in the world explicitly forbidding cryonics services passed in British Columbia, Canada. This law passed under Section 57 of The Cemetery and Funeral Services Act. The law states:
"No person shall offer for sale or sell any arrangement for the preservation or storage of human remains based on cryonics, irradiation or any other means of preservation or storage, by whatever name called, that is offered or sold on the expectation of the resuscitation of human remains at a future time."
When Canadian cryonicists learned of this law, they were shocked and confused. Where had this law come from and what on earth did irradiation have to do with it? One thing that was clear was that this law had been written without consulting any cryonicist organization, in Canada or abroad. In the 25 years that followed, cryonicists in Canada and the States have been working to understand how this law came about and ultimately, how to overturn it.
HISTORY (1990-2010)
The history of this anti-cryonics law was uncovered and studied by early cryonicists in the early 90s. The Act had been 14 years in the making. It was primarily based on the Gosse Royal Commission of 1976, a study conducted by a former law professor, Richard Gosse. Before the Act became law it had been reviewed by the following organizations: 1) the Cemeteries Association 2) Old Age Pensioners 3) the Association of Churches 4) the Funeral Directors’ Association 5) the Consumer’s Association of Canada and finally 6) the Memorial Society. There was no mention of cryonics in the Gosse Royal Commission of 1976, so by deduction, it was probably added by the government internally or at the suggestion of one of the six organizations listed above. No experts within the field of medicine, cryobiology or cryonics appeared to be consulted in the making of this law.
In 1991, Ben Best, a board member of the Cryonics Society of Canada, contacted the government and a number of organizations involved in the passing of this law in an attempt to figure out how it came about. Pursuing a lead on who had written the law, Ben contacted David Oliver of the Ministry of Labour and Consumer Services. Mr. Oliver expressed hostility to the idea of cryonics, but denied responsibility for the specific provision and stated he had merely recorded the consensus of the committee. Ben also contacted Mr. Snikars, the Registrar for the Cemeteries and Funeral Services Branch at the British Columbia Funeral Association to gather more information. Ben asked which scientists had been consulted in the making of this law, but most of his critical questions were evaded. There were a number of attempts by Ben and other B.C. cryonicists to figure out which persons or organizations were responsible for Section 57, but little concrete came out of those efforts.
In the years that followed, several cryonicists across Canada engaged in political activism in an attempt to have the law repealed. They engaged in phone and letter writing campaigns to the provincial government in power, The New Democrat Party (NDP). The NDP were in power in 1990 and continued to be in power for another four years after they were elected again in 1996. The NDP were not open to amending this law but they did inform Ben Best that they would consult B.C. cryonics activist Douglas Skrecky if the Funeral Services Act was reviewed. Once again, cryonicists in B.C. and Canada were not consulted when the law was rewritten. In 2004, Section 57 was rolled over into Section 14 of the Cremation, Interment and Funeral Services Act.
The original anti-cryonics provision was included with only minor changes in the wording and format. There was no change to the puzzling part about irradiation and furthermore there remained an ambiguity in the scope of this law. To clarify the matter, a few cryonics activists contacted politicians and bureaucrats with questions. They were told that the law did not prevent cryonicists from making arrangements outside of British Columbia. The government officials reassured cryonicists that it was only commercial transactions for cryonics, or its marketing in the province that was prohibited. The B.C. cryonicists were told that B.C. funeral directors were not prohibited from preparation and transport for cryonics purposes. They received a letter from Solicitor General Olaf Henry (September 2002) and Registrar Tayt Winnitoy (July 2005) to confirm this.
In 2006, Charles Grodzicki, a cryonicist in Vancouver, B.C. became increasingly worried about the impact of the anti-cryonics law on his attempts to make cryonics arrangements. He was rejected by a number of BC funeral directors when he approached them about assisting with cryonics. He was rejected despite B.C. politicians and bureaucrats’ letters of assurance that it is perfectly legal for funeral directors to transport patients for cryopreservation. This renewed another letter-writing campaign, this time directed towards the B.C. Funeral Services Association (BCFSA). This activism resulted in cryonics being discussed at a meeting of the BCFSA, and then subsequently by the Cemetery, Interment & Funeral Services Advisory Group, a part of Consumer Protection B.C. Cryonicists won a limited victory when the Consumer Protection B.C. released the following statement about cryonics:
July 21, 2006
THE ARRANGEMENT AND SALE OF CRYONIC SERVICES IN B.C.
Section 14 of The Cremation, Interment & Funeral Services Act continues to prohibit the sale in B.C. of an arrangement for the preservation or storage of human remains based on Cryonics and other processes with the expectation of resuscitation of human remains at a future time.
The section reads:
Prohibition on sales, and offers of sale, of Arrangements relating to cryonics and irradiation
14 A person must not offer for sale, or sell, an arrangement for the preservation or storage of human remains that is based on:
(a) cryonics,
(b) irradiation, or
(c) any other means of preservation or storage, by whatever name called,
and that is offered, or sold, on the expectation of the resuscitation of human remains at a future time.
This section of the Act does not prohibit funeral directors in B.C. from performing preparation and transport services related to a cryonic arrangement assuming that these services are in compliance with provincial health regulations […] and human remains transfer regulations […]
To be clear, should a consumer wish their remains to be preserved using cryonics, a B.C. funeral provider is not prohibited from performing any related services such as preparation and transport, as per the Cremation, Interment & Funeral Services Act regulations.
We describe this as a brief victory because there is still significant confusion and misconceptions surrounding this law. The interpretative guideline was not enough to convince many funeral directors that cryonics is a procedure they want to get involved with. End of life matters are controversial socially and legally, and with this law on the books, it becomes very difficult to get full cooperation.
Before even addressing the basic legitimacy or rationality of Section 14, the law itself is extremely ambiguous in its drafting, and far from assisting, the interpretative guideline from Consumer Protection BC only muddies the water further. “[A]n arrangement for the preservation or storage of human remains” is not further defined, thus it is essentially impossible to know precisely which steps of a standard cryonics procedure can be offered by B.C. funeral directors as “preparation and transport services related to a cryonics arrangement”. From a functional perspective, every step in cryonics stabilization procedures is carried out with the intent to preserve; starting with cooling the patient using ice and providing external cardiovascular support. This is true also of administration of anti-coagulants, anti-ischemic medications, and so on through the process. If the purpose of these procedures is not to “preserve” the “human remains”, then what are we doing, and why? Thus, either Consumer Protection BC is privy to some extralegal definition of “preservation” that we are not, or their own interpretation of s.14 is incorrect, and we are left with the simpler result that s.14 prohibits the sale and marketing of cryonics in British Columbia, including standby and stabilization procedures.
This is especially relevant in light of the fact that s.14 is specifically written to target not just cryonics but rather any means of preservation or storage of human remains, “based on” cryonics, or for that matter any other such arrangement sold on the expectation of future resuscitation. This seems intrinsically designed to capture arrangements or offerings repackaged as something not quite cryonics, but with the same end goal in mind — and especially considering that any funeral director or organization offering standby and stabilization services would be doing so in direct co-operation with a cryonics organization. Could such a person honestly say they weren’t offering an arrangement based on cryonics? Hardly.
The word “expectation” in the provision is problematic also. The words “promise” and “representation” have much more clearly defined meanings in law. An expectation is neither of these, so what is it? A hope? A belief in a non-zero probability of resuscitation? 50/50 odds? And how does the expectation get there? Does it matter if the person who offers the arrangements doesn’t create the expectation in the consumer’s mind, in fact explicitly denying any certainty regarding the outcome of the procedure (as both Alcor and Cryonics Institute do)?
And this points to the deeper, more insidious problem with Section 14. By honing in on the “expectations” of the buyer (and maybe the seller as well), the law is discriminating against cryonicists on the basis of their beliefs. Has any other group with as-yet-unprovable theories regarding the essential nature of life and death ever had to prove their ideas in order to be allowed to practice their prescribed, necessary treatments of legally dead persons, provided they harm no one else? Certainly this is unthinkable in a modern, plural society with constitutional protections for liberty, freedom of expression, and belief. Taking steps to extend one’s life, in some format, beyond the tangible, corporeal death is one of the most core and primal expressions of life, liberty and conscience that has ever existed. And yet because our beliefs smell more of objective reality than the rest, we are singled out and told our ideas are a fraud on the public, and even amongst ourselves.
No. This goes too far. This is not a permissible approach to the regulation of cryonics. And in our view, cryonicists are lucky this hasn’t caught on elsewhere. British Columbia is often looked to as a highly progressive jurisdiction. Section 14 remaining on the books in the province is unfair and harmful to cryonicists here, but is also harmful to the image of cryonics generally, and could be pointed to as legitimizing discrimination against cryonicists elsewhere in the future.
TODAY (2010 — Present)
In the spring of 2010, law student Keegan Macintosh learned about cryonics and reached out to the Cryonics Society of Canada to make contact with others in British Columbia who shared his interest. This resulted in a meeting with Charles Grodzicki, Doug Skrecky, and some others who had been involved in Section 14 agitation in previous years. The group of them started contacting local funeral directors to gauge willingness to work on cryonics cases.
In July of 2010, B.C. had its first cryonics case (the Cryonics Institute’s 98th patient), although this was only discovered by the group after the fact. Unfortunately, the circumstances of this case were far from ideal, so the mere fact that it had occurred without government or other obstruction on the basis of Section 14 was cold comfort to the group of B.C. cryonicists. However, they were able to get in contact with the funeral director who had worked on that case, and discuss with him working on future cases under more proactively planned circumstances. That funeral director was willing to work on future cases, but only on condition that he was not contractually obligated to provide anything beyond storage and shipment on ice (i.e. no heparin or other medicine administration, etc.), as he could not guarantee he would be personally available hone a case arose, and he was not willing to oblige his staff of family members to be involved.
Other, larger funeral homes which were contacted expressed superficial willingness to work with cryonicists, but subject to long lists of preconditions, including some which were essentially impossible to comply with, such as the cryonicist obtaining pre-clearance from the coroner’s office (a clearance the coroner cannot give pre-mortem). In the years since, another small-scale funeral director has been found who is willing to work with cryonicists in the Lower Mainland, though it is not at all clear just how far he is willing to go, given the ambiguity of both Section 14 and the statement issued from Consumer Protection B.C.
In early 2011, Keegan proposed founding a non-profit organization to advocate on behalf of cryonicists and life extension enthusiasts in the province. With the group’s support, Keegan reached out to Pro Bono Students Canada at UBC (PBSC) to locate a lawyer willing to supervise him in drafting the constitution and by-laws of the nascent organization. Later that year, he initiated another project with PBSC, finding a second law student to start researching the constitutional validity of s.14 under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The preliminary conclusion of that research was that s.14 was weak to attack under multiple sections of the Charter.
Serendipitously, just as that research was concluding, Ben Best put Keegan into contact with Bill Faloon of the Life Extension Foundation to discuss the situation in B.C. Bill expressed that the Life Extension Foundation (LEF) was willing to fund the B.C. non-profit’s work towards removing s.14. And thus, with the LEF’s support and an additional significant contribution by Vancouver-resident Alcor advisor Geoff Shmigelsky, Lifespan Society of B.C. was rapidly incorporated, going to work looking for suitable legal counsel. By the end of the summer of 2012, the organization had found what seemed to be a beneficial arrangement whereby a solo-practicing lawyer worked together with Keegan on the s.14 case. They embarked on this plan in the fall of 2012; unfortunately, by February of 2013, it became clear that this arrangement was not going to work as imagined, and Keegan went back to being Lifespan’s executive director to pursue alternative strategies. That spring, Lifespan Society retained Jason Gratl, a renowned civil liberties lawyer in Vancouver to pursue the s.14 challenge.
Lifespan has also worked during this time to establish a base of community support, growing both its membership and reach by educating the public on life extension science and ideology. Cryonics is by no means the only strategy we are pursuing in order to live healthier, longer lives, it is simply the one with an almost distracting level of attention drawn to it (for us) due to the presence of Section 14.
One crucial issue that has become apparent through Mr. Gratl’s work on the matter is the lack of a concrete factual matrix in B.C. upon which a court could make a decision about Section 14, if asked to. That is to say, courts are wary of (and some might argue, can’t) decide on matters in the abstract. For a challenge of Section 14 to proceed properly, it simply isn’t enough for a B.C. cryonicist to claim that their rights are infringed by the law impeding access to hypothetical services offered by a hypothetical local cryonics rescue operation. Someone else needs to be seeking to offer such arrangements, and credibly so, for the picture to come into crisp focus for the courts. Mr. Gratl’s advice made it clear that we needed to start a British Columbian cryonics service provider in order to have the best possible chance at pleading our case successfully.
In March 2014, in order for Keegan to finish the process of becoming a lawyer in his own right, another local cryonicist, Carrie Wong took over as Executive Director of Lifespan Society. Her role was to put together a cryonics standby company for the purpose of challenging section 14. Mr. Gratl had already drafted a cryopreservation agreement for this cryonics standby company, so we had the offer itself; we just needed a company to offer it. It was up to Carrie to start putting together the corporate structure of the company and to assemble expertise and equipment to make the case convincing in the courts. One of Carrie’s first tasks was to find an experienced and knowledgeable cryonics advocate to run the standby company. After some brainstorming with Lifespan’s board we came up with our ideal CEO of the standby company: Christine Gaspar. Christine is the current president of the Cryonics Society of Canada, as well as a registered nurse who has been a cryonics advocate for 15 years, with writings recently appearing in publications such as Humanity+, KurzweilAI, IEET, and Cryonics Magazine. She has received training with the Alcor Southern California standby team and was involved in a cryonics case in Toronto, Canada. Carrie contacted Christine to gauge her level of interest, and Christine got on board with the project enthusiastically. Christine has wanted to be a part of a standby team for a number of years, and with the input of the board of Lifespan and Christine, we decided to call this company Biostasis Canada.
The original approach was to create a “starter” company, a company that didn’t quite have everything that was needed to do proper standby. We would just borrow or rent equipment from some of our contacts for the duration of the case. This original approach was relatively cost effective but in the process of putting together this “starter” company, we started to strongly recognize the need for permanent standby services in B.C. that extended beyond just challenging Section 14. Our ambitions became greater; we wanted to produce something as a result of striking down the law.
Our equipment would be real, our personnel would be legitimate, why not just create a standby company that would provide a lasting service to Canadian cryonicists. Why stop at Section 14? So now, not only were we preparing for the section 14 challenge; we were also attempting to assemble a lasting cryonics company. This was no trivial feat; it required coordinating the efforts and expertise of a number of key players, and this was not even getting into the financial cost of such an undertaking. Cryonics is a small and tight-knit community and there are many who wanted to help with our cause. What is time consuming and difficult is coordinating people and resources.
We had found the potential CEO of Biostasis, but we still needed a board of directors, a science advisory board, and also separate expert witnesses to provide affidavits for the court challenge. We also needed funding for equipment such as a transport vehicle, portable ice bath, storage space, medications, and at least some limited personnel. Lifespan Society had started its legal challenge with a very generous donation from Life Extension Foundation, but we soon realized we did not have enough funding to launch the strongest possible challenge against Section 14 and we certainly did not have enough funding to start Biostasis Canada.
In April 2014, Carrie Wong went to the Young Cryonicist Gathering in Florida. She went there to represent Canadian cryonicists and to advocate on behalf of Lifespan Society regarding the anti-cryonics law. Carrie spoke to Ben Best to update him on how the legal challenge was going and what steps we were taking. She also spoke to Bill Faloon and let him know that a summary letter of the legal situation was available from our lawyer, Mr. Gratl. After meeting Ben in person, Carrie started corresponding with Ben via email to try to organize Biostasis Canada. Ben was very helpful and insightful, being the first activist on the scene nearly 25 years ago. We hope one day Ben will get to see someone finish what he started.
As of today, Biostasis Canada is still in the works. We crafted a business proposal and budget reflecting our most ambitious plans, but thus far there haven’t been any takers. It is possible for us to start our legal challenge with the smaller, more budget-conscious version of the company but ultimately we still need donations to continue our work into the future. We realize that cryonics traditionally has not been profitable business, but perhaps that is something that can change in the future. One way or the other, dedicated Canadian cryonicists are still hard at work. It’s been 25 years but it isn’t over yet.
In the year 2018, we reached a resolution: https://www.futuristclub.com/post/canadian-cryonics-legal-activism
