I've refrained from commenting on President Reagan's ninety-first birthday, because many have commemorated it much more ably than I could hope to do. But Peggy Noonan's piece in tomorrow's (or today's, given that most readers will see this in the morning after I've written it) Opinion Journal, prompts me to make a point that I suspect few others will.

Journalists feel an honest compassion for Mr. Reagan's condition--everyone is saddened by the thought that this great man who was once so much a part of our lives no longer knows he was great, no longer remembers us. It's big enough to be called tragic: this towering figure so reduced by illness. Part of it too is a growing appreciation of Nancy Reagan, who is doing now what she did for 50 years, protecting him, protecting his memory and his privacy. Only now she does it 24-7 at the age of 78, and without the help and comfort of the best friend of her life: him. She told me some months ago how to this day she'll think of something and want to say, "Honey, remember the time . . ." Or something will happen and she'll want to ask him what he thinks. And of course she can't.

President Reagan is already, functionally, dead.

Ronald Reagan is a "living" example of what the cryonicist (not cryogenics) community means when they define death as "information death."

Death is not a functional state; it is a legal one. We currently define it legally based on function. Does he breathe? Does his heart pump his life blood? Does his brain emit a dance of intricate patterns?

He has lost all memory of his life, his loves, his accomplishments. To the degree that he has any consciousness, it is a circular loop--a stream flowing into itself. He has no knowledge of his childhood, his first murmurings of lust, his first kiss, his first love. He knows not his name, his titles, his professions, his family...his life. How could a grave be any worse?

If souls exist, his has long departed, perhaps to come back only for the occasional visit--the rare twinkle of the eye when Nancy wipes his brow, the fragile and momentary hint of recognition when Patti says, "I love you, Dad."

Yet consider--could he have been put into a state of stasis fifteen years ago, and revived in the future, he would remember his parents. He would know his wife. He would know his children. He would know his goals, his ambitions, his achievements. Today, he breathes, his heart beats, his synapses synap, in the ancient dance, in a fashion. Yet he knows nothing. He is dead, by any reasonable definition of the word.

As the Bard said, "this mortal coil" is an utterly unsatisfactory repository for our selves, our lives. It shuffles off too easily, and in fact, sometimes we even shuffle off ourselves too blithely, and leave it behind. Until we recognize that there is both more, and less, to life than respiration, digestion, and metabolism, until we solve the puzzle of how to liberate ourselves from this ephemeral bag of meat and bone, we will make little true progress in our inevitable journey toward life eternal, or at least as eternal as the universe allows.