X-Message-Number: 10807
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 07:22:55 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10800 - #10806

Hi everyone!

To Bob Ettinger and others: Let us suppose that 21st Century Med's
methods are far in advance of current cryonics methods for suspension.
Even so there is a gap which needs to be filled: what about those 
who have been suspended with the old methods? If we value the ideas of
cryonics, then work on means to revive someone who has NOT been suspended
with the best methods of the time will still be needed.

For that matter, even if we suppose that every cryonics society is now
fully trained and able to suspend people using 21st Century Med's 
techniques, there are always people who will fall through the cracks.
(To those reading this, YOU might turn out to be such a person, so 
don't forget this). It may take to long for the suspension team to
get to you, for instance. And sure, you may even have had some 
treatment, cobbled together with what was available, so that there
would be no problem with blood coagulation in your circulatory system
and you really could be perfused --- but unfortunately hours afterwards.

I too am eagerly awaiting DETAILED reports of the methods and the
discoveries made by 21st Century Medicine's research. If it fulfils the
promise so strongly suggested, it will be a big advance. Yet cryonics
does NOT consist solely of suspending people known to be dying under
conditions similar to those of a hospital. It is emergency medicine,
in which we do the best we can to preserve someone as well as we can.
And I doubt very much that 21st Century Med's methods, as they now
stand, can be applied to ALL emergency circumstances. A high percentage,
maybe, but hardly all. And wasn't it our idea, in the beginning, that
we'd try to save as many as we could?

To be a little simple about it, no technology ever goes completely out
of use. Horses still have advantages in rough terrain; biplanes are
good for crop-spraying, while a jet plane would be disastrous. I suggest
that anyone working on cryonics technology continue to do so, at least
until the full details of the 21st Century seminar become available to
all. Your work may well help save some people for whom that technology
could not be fully applied.

To Thomas Norton: I see that you have one more doubter, and an 
articulate one too. I will merely add here that the sources you listed
simply aren't sufficient. The best sources are those which look at
unmodified data and provide that unmodified data too. The worst are those
that merely provide opinions and claim their validity on rumor or
common beliefs. If you want to discuss violence in the US (or ANYWHERE)
THEN you should use the best sources you can. And if you want to use
the internet, unfortunately the best sources are likely to require
payment of a fee to use them. If you are a cryonicist, you've already
worked out in one area of thought that what is commonly believed must
be false. This should tell you to look skeptically at other common
beliefs, too.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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