X-Message-Number: 11497
From: 
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 09:38:18 EST
Subject: cloning plus

Recent questions here related to cryoprserving samples for possible future
cloning. Two comments:

1. Cryonics Institute does offer cryopreservation of tissue samples at no
charge--but only for members. So you could get indefinitely long sample
storage--plus some archive storage if desired--for the Option One membership
fee of $1,250. This would also allow you to execute a contract for
yourself--or for someone else--when desired.

2. It has been repeatedly pointed out that most of us see no motivation for
preserving a tissue sample that might eventually allow growth of a clone or
genetic twin; but attitudes differ. What is noted less often is that
cryopreservation of yourself would allow--at least--revival of someone MORE
like you than a twin or clone would be.

If you are cryopreserved, even if you are in relatively very bad condition and
frozen by almost any method at all, there will be plenty of DNA recoverable
and also at least SOME information about you as an individual, observable in
your brain and body, as well as information from external records. Therefore
future technology should have no difficulty restoring you, at a minimum,  with
much more fidelity than a clone would have. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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