X-Message-Number: 10028 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:42:12 -0700 From: Fred Chamberlain <> From: Fred Chamberlain <> Subject: Cryonics Motivations and Acceptance of Technologies Date: July 10, 1998 In >Message #10022, "Scott Badger" <> says: > They won't sign up until it works, but by the time it > works, they won't need to. Bottom line. . .few recruits. If Scott Badger, at that time, should have a malfunction in a reentry glide vehicle and impact the ground at something in excess of Mach 3, his auto-neuropreservation system might handily remove his head and flashfreeze it, but he would probably miss the party that night. However, all other things working out for the positive, he might be back at work two weeks later, with nothing more in the way of cost (besides the two weeks lost) than a slight increase in his insurance premiums. On the other hand, if Scott Badger should hurtle off a cliff in a car now and be brought to an emergency room, and live long enough to wonder if cryonics might have worked, wondering about it might be the last thought he would ever entertain! In >Message #10023, George Smith <> observes: > You will have your "scientific" authoritative endorsements > AFTER cryonics has brought back to life suspended human > beings. None of those brought back will be the current > authority figures, for those lock-step group-think panderers > to the status quo of their "scientism" guilds will have all died > years before. Those who survive will be those who were > moved to TAKE THE RISK. The authorities will endorse perfected suspended animation when enough hospitals are using it so that the insurance carriers have to include it as a "medical benefit." They will despair, however, that those placed into "perfected vitrification" will ever be recovered. This, they will say, is "pure charlitanism," and that the only thing worse is "ordinary cryonics!" Later, still other authorities will endorse the earlier use of "perfected vitrification" when (and if) the modest repairs necessary to restore those suspendees to life have been demonstrated to work in a sufficient number of cases. Those who were saved in this way will probably have been quite wealthy, and no importance will be attached to the fact that their trusts paid the very large fees required for their reanimations. These later authorities will dispute the possibility that any "ordinary cryonics" patients will ever be recovered. "Even if they could be," they will say, "who would pay for it?" Time will pass. Authorities will come and go. Now, supposing that those who received the "best" cryonics treatments could be reanimated, those who had set aside large trust accounts or made similar arrangements (perhaps by way of "LifePacts") would be "back on the street" first. The techniques developed to recover those who received "perfected vitrification" would necessarily have been vastly extended. Would there be memory losses? Perhaps! Would they be large, or small? We cannot presently say! Would the people thus recovered be happy to be alive? Why not? (Unless they were placed in suspension by their relatives with no forewarning, in which case the relatives had better "be there" to explain it to them.) Even the authorities of this day will despair that those with more damage than the "best suspended" will ever be recovered. As they are proved to be in error (supposing that this is the case) other authorities will state that only a small percentage of those who frozen will ever be returned to life, for economic reasons. As recovery costs drop and rehabilitation programs are shown to be economically feasible on a self supporting basis, the authorities and critics will finally have to dispense with cryonics and busy themselves with disputing the possibilities of virtual reality, uploading, faster than light travel, prevailing cosmological theories, the social projections of the day, economic theories of the future of the solar system, and so forth. Pessemistic authorities and other critics, as a class, are probably immortal. If it were not for them, we would lose the pleasure of seeing them proven wrong. They were surely among us long before the "flat earth" theory was in vogue, and no doubt will be with us in disputing whether or not the universe will ever come to an end, until it actually does (if ever!) Fred Chamberlain, President/CEO () Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr., Suite 110, Scottsdale AZ 85260-6916 Phone (602) 922-9013 (800) 367-2228 FAX (602) 922-9027 http://www.alcor.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10028