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From: mmm@cup.portal.COM (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Dangers of Nanotech (Reanimating Corpses)
Message-ID: <8905040521.AA11905@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 1 May 89 06:45:41 GMT
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Before nanotech makes it possible to bring some of the dead back to life,
we ought to consider some of the potential consequences.

For example, lots of people are planning to be frozen after death, in hopes
of being revived in the future.  How do you know your re-animated corpse will
really be you?  At a minimum, the experience should be similar to the mental
disturbance which occurs during electroconvulsive shock therapy (severe memory
loss, personality changes, etc.).  If you believe in the existence of a 
soul, there's also the possibility that the "new you" will actually be
somebody else;  i.e. another soul would come to inhabit your body, should
it be rendered re-inhabitable.

Does a body need to be frozen to be re-animated?  What if the structure
of a dried brain can be read out by an e-beam electromicrotome?  Who would
be the first person to be re-animated?

The obvious candidate is Lenin.  His preserved body is kept in a tomb in
Red Square.  (I don't know what shape the brain is in;  it may have been
destroyed in the preservation process, like the brains of Egyptian pharoahs.)

What a disaster that would be!  Even if the second incarnation of Lenin
was merely a genetic clone educated from Lenin's writings, that would be 
a dangerous man.  He would be the focal point for the revitalization of 
Communism.  If he advocated the philosophy of the original Lenin, it would
be a philosophy of uncompromised dedication to the goal of World Revolution.
He would be a living example of the achievement of the promise of religion
(immortality) through the acts of man alone.  Even if he only pushed the
same old brand of socialism, it would take on a new intensity that would
plunge the world into a struggle that would make WW2 look like a card game.

[An interesting thesis.  I wonder, however.  Suppose you were to bring
 back Martin Luther now.  The burning issues of yesteryear don't seem
 quite so all-consuming, though in his day he sparked religious wars
 of hundred-year duration.  In time (I hope) Lenin will be seen this 
 way also.
 --JoSH]