[Yardlink]

He waited a day or two to be frozen after he died. Doesn't that mean his brain will have already suffered massive damage from oxygen deprivation and be unrecoverable? I thought you would have to freeze yourself before your brain begins to destroy itself. However, that may mean doing it before you die, which could be illegal (assisted suicide) in the US.

[blueskin_]

>Just after his legal death was declared Thursday at 9 a.m., Finney’s body was flown to a facility of the cryonics firm known as the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Sounds like a fairly standard preservation; definitely not days in between. As it is, even if a field perfusion is not performed, cardiopulmonary support plus gradual cooling still massively reduce any chance of brain damage.

A standby is when they wait at your deathbed with a doctor, then get to work as soon as you are pronounced dead, including using a machine to perform cardiopulmonary support to circulate oxygen to the brain while cooling. They then start perfusion (replacement of blood with cryoprotectant), normally in the field.

Cryonics as assisted suicide would be preferable as an option, but a standby is significantly better than nothing. As it is, several US states have legalised assisted suicide, so it could potentially become an option in those states, but I guess nobody wants the mess of the legal battle to set a precedent. If there was a Swiss cryonics company, it would probably be available as assisted suicide today.

See also my other comment on assisted suicide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8241828