X-Message-Number: 10042
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 06:53:44 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10037 - #10041

Hi everyone!

A kinda addendum to Paul Wakfer's comments re. evidence --- not
disagreeing, really, but expanding upon them. 

The problem that cryonics simply cannot be evaluated validly by 
current medical and scientific standards is an important problem
for us, and I believe a central one. It resembles the problem that
any antiaging drug cannot be evaluated for its effectiveness in
human beings by any currently accepted standard (cf. my previous
comments on Cryonet, the one to which I am now replying). Both
cases simply take too long --- yet they do not take as long as
it might take to, say, evaluate a theory of stellar evolution.

Fundamentally, truth (or whatever metaphysical notion may someday
replace it) simply cannot depend on our features as human being:
not our lifespans, certainly, nor the fact that we are made of
proteins and other such chemicals, nor the condition of the Earth
itself. Yet both cryonics and immortality, once we start thinking
of actual treatments, show that current science has not yet freed
itself from that human point of view. Paul and I may disagree upon
how much of a problem this gives us in convincing others of our
ideas, but the existence of the problem remains.

As Mike Perry has done, we can try one way (as if the results of
our activities will never reveal themselves) or the other (as if we
can usefully do experiments lasting more than one present human
lifetime). Neither is really very satisfactory. It may be much
better if we took this problem on directly: just as we can argue that
those now thought to be "dead" may not be, we might argue that the
standard of scientific (or medical!) truth accepted today falls
short of what we need to truly understand reality. 

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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