X-Message-Number: 10022 From: "Scott Badger" <> Subject: Will they need it when they want it? Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 08:42:20 -0500 Hi everyone, I've repeatedly heard it said that finding cures for all our diseases and reversing the aging process will be much less of a challenge than repairing the cellular damage brought about by the cryopreservation process. If so, this begs the question; "Why would skeptics need cryonics by the time they're willing to consider it?" If the skeptic survives to the time when cryonics reliably *works*, and it's endorsed by celebrity scientists and the media, then s/he probably won't need to be frozen since death and disease will already have been conquered. I can imagine that cryonics will continue to be useful as an emergency procedure for accidental deaths (which will also decline in the future) as well as some other relatively rare circumstances, but the overall implication is that if cryonics must be shown to work before people are convinced to sign up, then why do we think they will flock to sign up once it does and they don't need it anymore? The last thing I want to do is sound pessimistic here and I'm completely in favor of further research, but if it is fundamentally accepted that recruiting efforts will be relatively fruitless because cryonics doesn't work yet, then we seem to be in a no-win situation. They won't sign up until it works, but by the time it works, they won't need to. Bottom line. . .few recruits. This will certainly not deter me from eventually (I know, I know) signing up. I don't expect cryonics to work before I *deanimate*, so waiting is the bigger gamble to me. But it concerns me that the above, if true, implies continued low membership levels which may eventually threaten the viability of the firm I select to freeze me. Now, would someone please poke some holes in this hypothesis (like I had to ask). Best regards, Scott Badger Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10022