In regards to the post about "Ian MacDonald's Terminal Cafe" ... (Which I haven't read so I can't comment on how it deals with the subject)
You could, conceivably, use NT to "resurrect" (perhaps "resucitate" or "revive" would be less loaded terms) the dead -- but unless the brain is in "fairly good" shape, it won't be the _same person_ who died (in the intellectual sense).
Drexler covers this territory in regards to reviving cryonically-suspended people. So long as the fine structure of the brain is well-enough preserved (so you can tell which neurons linked to which others) it should be possible to repair the connections and any freezing damage. The body is simple compared to the brain; most people probably aren't that concerned if the cells in their liver have been rearranged (considering that all body cells _except_ neurons are continually renewed anyway, such an objection would be silly).
This, of course, assumes that science's current understanding of the brain is accurate; that the personality, memory, etc, is encoded entirely in the synaptic structure; if RNA _is_ memory and it's damaged by freezing, or if we really have noncorporeal souls, we may be out of luck.
But reviving anyone who's died and been allowed to decay -- that would probably be impossible. You could, I suppose, clone a body from any remaining DNA (or otherwise make a replica of the original), then construct a brain with memories based on a *really* good record of the person's life, but I wouldn't be too confident about the efficacy of the results.
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= PHILLIP THORNE, <thornp2@rpi.edu> URL: http://www.rpi.edu/~thornp2 =
= RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE (Always under construction!) =
= TROY, NEW YORK, USA "It's the boundary conditions that get you." =
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