X-Message-Number: 12019
From: 
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:30:15 EDT
Subject: Just The Facts

Mr Charles Platt -- whose happy voice and gigglingly bright optimism has for 
too long been missed on Cryonet -- decided to review a recent post of mine, 
and so waylaid it in the back alley of sci.cryonics.  To lighten the hearts 
of those of us who have missed the twinkle in his dimpled cheeks, I wish to 
post my reply in both locales.

Mr Platt began by upbraiding me on my understanding of drowning.  He wrote:

<< First, coldwater drowning
survivors are mostly children whose ratio of surface area to volume is
high.>>

This is the 'some success = no success' approach I so often see applied in 
cryo-debate.  'Mostly' children survive -- ie some adults survive. What does 
this refute? Or is he claiming that no adult ever survived coldwater drowning?

<<Second, the processes of ischemic injury to the brain are extremely
complex and not yet fully understood.>>

Therefore -- what?  This statement puzzled me too.  Ischemia is complex, 
therefore everyone who drowns is irretrievably brain-dead? Well -- that's, 
um, not so.  

<<Third, under laboratory conditions
which are NOT generally available to dying patients (certainly not those
who are signed up in CI!) widely respected researchers such as Peter Safar 
have had limited success (to put it politely) resuscitating animals by 
applying external cooling.>>

Do I take this to mean that Alcor and CryoCare members die exclusively in 
laboratory settings?  I compliment them on their timing!  I cannot compliment 
Mr Platt on repeating the above argumentative quirk in his subtle use of the 
adjective, 'limited', however.  He might quite as truthfully have said, 
"Widely respected researchers such as Peter Safar have had some success 
resuscitating animals by applying external cooling!"  Ah, but that might have 
given some poor damned soul in the cryonics movement hope.  Ugh.  And here 
too I feel to see his overall point.  Is he saying that cooling doesn't 
retard ischemia?  Strange position for a cryonicist.  What's he suggest 
instead?  Warming?

<<READ SOME BOOKS OR PAPERS ON THIS TOPIC.>>

Now Charles -- don't shout.  You're a prose stylist at Wired, remember.  Caps 
indeed.  Did Goethe use caps?  If you know of a good book or paper, just calm 
down and give the folks its title.  We'll get to it.

<<External cooling is an extremely slow and inefficient method of reducing 
body temperature. To imply that ischemic injury can be prevented by the 
external application of cold water is grossly simplistic and misleading, and 
suggests that you are at best uninformed, at worst deceptive.>>

To imply that I made the flat-out stupid statement that "Ischemic injury can 
be prevented by the external application of cold water!", which I did not, 
and which wouldn't 'deceive' a five-year-old, much less the doctors, 
neurologists, and biochemists who read Cryonet is grossly simplistic and 
misleading in itself.  And to further suggest that I am 'at best uninformed, 
at worst deceptive' -- that's a trifle over-harsh, don't you think?  
(Deceptive!  As if I have really nothing better to do with my time than pull 
the wool over the eyes of the simple-minded cryobiologists and nurses and 
neuroscientists who poke through this list -- not to mention the trusting 
puppy-like gaze of Charles Platt himself!) I don't agree with you, Charles, 
for the reasons stated above, but I don't call you ignorant or or a willful 
liar because you don't agree with me.  Give me the benefit of the doubt, eh?

<<Positivism is only useful if you apply it sensibly. After you read your 
piece of paper every day, what do you do then? If your answer is, "I embark 
on a study program to educate myself in relevant fields, with the possible 
long-term goal of becoming a cryobiologist," I would have great respect for 
your initiative.>>

My answer is, "Embark on a study program to educate yourself in relevant 
fields, with the possible long-term goal of becoming a cryobiologist."  

<<If, on the other hand, your positivism is
merely going to lead you to make more long Usenet posts, I feel rather
differently about it.>>

Well, as the saying goes, if I had more time, I'd write a short post. Since I 
don't, I guess all I can do is, "Embark on a study program to educate myself 
in relevant fields, with the possible long-term goal of becoming a 
Usenetologist."

But, of course, I won't.  To assert that, since there are reasons for 
optimism about cryonic revival, everyone should immediately chuck one's 
entire career and go into cryobiology and shun Usenet -- well, that's silly.  
Charles can no doubt come up with several plausible reasons why man will land 
on Mars one day.  Does he really need to chuck his Wired press pass and take 
a decade of exobiology at Berkeley to check 'em all out in micro-detail?  I 
think not.  

<<You are misquoting Fahy, who (as a good scientist) has always been very 
cautious about any endorsement of human cryopreservation.>>

I do not believe I quoted Dr Fahy at all -- much as I would love to, for I 
consider his court declaration on cryonics to be one of the great papers of 
the entire science.  If his thinking has undergone a 180 degree turn and you 
have a fresh quotation from the man stating that, "ahhh, cryonics is a lotta 
bunk and it'll never work," let's see it.

<<Drexler (whom I happen to admire) is still regarded as a fringe scientist, 
at best. No biologist that I know of takes him (or Merkle) seriously. Minksy 
is widely respected, but only in his field of expertise, which of course has 
nothing to do with biology.>>

(Prize-winning MIT professor K. Eric Brexler is not merely 'fringe', note, 
but fringe 'at best'!  I'm glad Mr Platt didn't do 'at worst'.  There may be 
youthful virgins among the Cryonet readership.)  To enlighten Mr Platt as to 
a biologist, however, I believe Ed Regis' book, Nano!, contains the names of 
several.  To mention only one: William de Grado, whose du Pont group designed 
-- and built -- the world's first artificial protein in the winter of 87/88.  
De Grado specifically took Drexler's 'inverted approach' to reach a solution, 
and cited "Drexler 81; Pablo 83" in his paper.  So now Mr Platt knows one 
biologist who takes Eric Drexler seriously -- and indeed made biological 
history -- confirming some of Drexler's ideas on the subject.  

As for 'Minksy'-- that's Marvin Minksy, folks -- to write a careless 
statement that seems to imply that Marvin Minsky, who is generally regarded 
at the father of artificial intelligence and whose spent his entire career 
studying and trying to imitate the cognitive functions of the human mind, 
knows nothing about the human brain, is ludicrous.  Go read some books and 
papers yourself, Charles, starting with 'The Society Of Mind', and come back 
wiser and chastened.

> Because life is nicer than death.  Because detailed scenarios about
> vitrification and cell repair are gaining general acceptance. 

Where? Citations, please.

Certainly.

1.  'Life is nicer than death' -- Big Bird:  Sesame Street (Jn, '91)

2.  Vitrification.  See Charles Platt's article on the latest 21CM conference 
-- available at the Cryonics Institute website, along with a link to 
CryoCare.  If it was your contention in that article that 21CM's 
"breakthroughs", unquote, mean that vitrification is undergoing regress, not 
progress, and got general laughter rather than a receptive hearing from the 
medical professionals in attendance, I must be reading wrong.

3.  As for cell repair, I believe that Dr Richard Smaller, 1996 Nobel Prize 
Winner for Chemistry, stated that he expected them to be in operation by 
2010.  Email Stockholm. 

<<Alcor has had a pamphlet written specifically for Christians, for at least 
ten years. It doesn't work any better than any other cryonics literature.>>

Gee, I love the hidden assumption there -- did you catch it, everyone? -- 
that all cryonics literature doesn't work, period.  Curious comment from a 
gentleman who's not only written some of it, but some of the very best 
examples of it.

But, to look at it more closely:  there are (according to the 1997 
Information Please Almanac -- I want to get the citations down; this guy is a 
real stickler for details, folks -- )249,277,000 avowed Christians in North 
America.  Now Alcor's web site does not boast 249,277,000 hits -- or any 
hits, so far as I know, since they still don't have a web counter.  Ergo I 
deduce from this that most Christians haven't read this pamphlet and been 
thunderstruck by the light gleaming from the forehead of Alcor's resident 
theologian.  True, in remaining unread, it does indeed resemble most cryonics 
pamphlets.  Perhaps Alcor should try Direct Mail, or maybe just let people 
have it or download it for free, like CI does with its informational material.

<<Before complaining that something has not been tried and does not exist, I 
suggest you should make elementary efforts to verify your supposition.>>

If, Charles, you are claiming that the cryonics movement has gone out of its 
way to ingratiate itself to people holding religious views, you must be 
planning a return to science fiction.  Alcor has written one (1) pamphlet.  
Which will cost the Christian Fundamentalist who miraculously stumbles onto a 
copy of 'Cryonics' in his pew in the Ozarks a two buck fee to mail-order. And 
you ask me to make 'elementary efforts to verify' why the 700 Club isn't 
breaking down Alcor's doors?  Give me a break!

<>

Actually, the feeling's mutual.  The Silicon Man was quite well done.

<>

Oh boy.  Caps again.  Charles!  Take three deep breaths, put the ol' Mozart 
adagios on the CD player, and sit down and have a sip of port.

<< we run
the risk of losing the tiny amount of credibility we have gained in the
past thirty years.>>

Well, to judge by your apparent estimates of it, that amount is not so much 
tiny but zero. Small risk there!  But really:  'to ANY DEGREE':  the notion 
that if I say, what, that CryoCare has 80 members when the number is really 
79, then thirty years of all our blood, sweat, and tears will be reduced to 
Pompeiian dust in a millisecond -- well, it's ridiculous.  I do not think our 
argument is about fact at all.  (If it were, I expect Mr Platt's alert eye 
would have caught it out at once, and his tongue mashed me to a pulp for it, 
and rightly so.  I'm not omniscient, and if I make a mis-statement, I will 
thank the guy who informs me of it publicly.)  No, we agree on the facts:  
ischemia is bad, cooling helps, research is desirable, nano-techies assert 
this, mind uploaders that, etc. It's all out there, and it's all part of the 
public record.  What we are discussing is not 'fact' -- that hypnotic 
abstraction -- but rather the interpretation of those facts, and the actions 
to be taken on that basis.  The pure fact is only that there are intelligent, 
learned, informed, qualified scholarly people who think we have very good 
grounds indeed for thinking that someone placed in cryonics suspension today 
-- even after long periods of ischemia and even taken into consideration 
freezing damage -- has a very good chance of survival and restoration.  I 
don't see anything particularly deceptive about pointing that out, or 
suggesting that people go read their books and papers and see for themselves.

And I don't see how we 'risk our credibility' by pointing out that there are 
reasons for hope as well as despair.  I mean -- there are!  It's not like the 
cryonics scene today is one of utter and irrevocable blackness.  Thirty years 
ago, vitrification, nano-scale engineering, brain cell regeneration, cloning, 
were sci-fi absurdities.  Today they're *here*.  How are we 'risking our 
credibility' by stating the fact?  "Dr K. Eric Drexler, PhD, is MIT professor 
of molecular nanotechnology," is a fact; Drexler is 'fringe' is an (highly 
debatable) evaluation, and 'no biologist respects him' is simply a patently 
silly statement -- what, not *one* biologist *anywhere*?  Have we polled the 
whole bunch?  Or are we read minders now too?  It's this latter of sloppy 
misstatement that 'risks credibility'.
   
<<Also, any organization that can be accused of offering
"false hope" to people near death runs the risk of being sued by
relatives.>>

Bad news for the Roman Catholic Church!  Maybe we should send the Pope a 
letter.  (Hey, and stick in that Alcor pamphlet & a $2 invoice, eh?  You 
think Alcor takes Italian lire?)

<< This is not a remote possibility. Such suits have been filed. >>

Asinine lawsuits have always been filed.  This is why I take a small bit of 
comfort in the fact that five of the nine Directors of the Cryonics Institute 
have law degrees.  I note that no cryonics provider has ever been 
successfully sued on that basis, nor has any cryonics member been ass enough 
to claim an absolute guarantee.  I also note that a scrupulous avoidance of 
false hope doesn't entail offering no hope at all, much less going out of our 
way to belittle every conceivable possibility of hope, much less smear every 
'fringe' PhD profiled by Time Magazine who flatly states that we have very 
good reason to hope.

<<Maybe we should ask the Cryonics Institute to give us a more accurate
estimate of its membership. Since it signs people for life, in exchange
for a one-time payment, it has absolutely no way of knowing how many of
its members still actively desire its services.>>

I could ask, how many CryoCare members still 'actively desire' *its* 
services?  But since Charles Platt can't read CC minds any more than I can 
read CI ones, the point's moot.  The rest of his statement isn't, though:  
it's characterization of CI membership policy lacks the -- dare I say -- 
'elementary efforts to verify supposition' that one of my favorite writer 
insists upon -- in others.  Life membership isn't unique with CI.  Alcor too 
has a Life Membership plan, does it not?  (Come, let's gore the whole herd 
while we're at it, eh, Charles?)  In point of fact CI has an alternative 
membership payment option which allows members to pay annual -- indeed 
quarterly -- dues.  Which is one way CI knows they're there.  The other way, 
of course, is by phone, mail, email, etc.  CI has all its members' addresses 
(held in confidence, of course) and sends them holiday greetings, 
questionnaires, asks for suggestions, and so on.  Or does Mr Platt think that 
CI signs up members without asking their address or phone number?  Wrong 
there too.  Check out the CI membership form after you re-read The Society Of 
Mind.

<< In the past, CI has been
reluctant to give any firm estimate of its membership, partly for this
reason.>>

Which doesn't exist.

<<If you have actual figures, I'd love to see them.>>

226.  And rising.  How's CryoCare doing? 

<<Also, I would be curious to know if you have informed your new members of 
the precise details of the treatment they are likely to receive after
legal death, and the concomitant damage which is likely to occur.>>

Sure.  CI not only has several pages talking about its policies and 
procedures, plus posted research by Yuri Piguchin (who's with 21CM now, or so 
I believe).  It also has links to every other cryonics services provider, to 
BPI's tech briefs, to cryobiology pages, to ACS, Alcor, Trans Time and 
CryoCare, indeed to the very Cryonet archives where Charles Platt's own 
corrosive commentary can be singled out by author, viewed, read, and assessed 
by the visitor to www.cryonics.org at length.  CI hides nothing critical of 
it from its members or the public -- even when that criticism borders on the 
malicious or ill-informed or is just plain wrong, as are Mr Platt's remarks 
about lifetime membership above.

However, to depart for a moment from the cheesy (but at least laughable and 
easily refuted) implication that CI is concealing anything, Charles has 
raised an important issue here.  What he is referring to (O first-time 
readers) is a very evocatively phrased distinction he once made between what 
he called 'techno-radicals' and 'bio-conservatives'.  Bio-conservatives, to 
paraphrase Mr Platt, feel that you have to do as little damage to a person as 
possible when performing a cryonics suspension.  The less damage going in, 
the less damage to repair afterwards.  Techno-radicals, by contrast, note 
that even the most ultra-sophisticated cutting-edge procedures produces 
damage on a scale that's not only sickening to contemplate but irreparable by 
any currently existing means; but not (thank God) irreparable in the light of 
certain technological research programmes and developments, most notably 
nanotechnology.  Indeed scientists in that field have long argued that the 
ischemic and freezing damage done to cells even in crude freezing cases not 
only is repairable, but that the window of time allowing for such repair may 
be considerably longer than formerly thought.  (Interested readers are 
directed to Ralph Merkle's Molecular Repair of the Brain essay at his Xerox 
PARC website.)  

Now Mr Platt is a bio-Conservative of positively Reaganesque purity;  whereas 
CI, he notes with a shudder, seems to be in the techno-radical camp.  He is 
-- for once -- right.  The Cryonics Institute has taken a look at things with 
precisely the bitter realism that Mr Platt has long espoused, and it's noted 
clearly that all the painstaking procedures in the world won't prevent 
immense damage from happening to a cryonics patient; it has further observed 
that the high-ticket bells-and-whistles medical-esque approach of the 
bio-conservatives doesn't mean squat if the member of such a 'conservative' 
organization dies alone and undergoes hours or days of lengthy ischemia, or 
dies in an accident and faces mandatory legal autopsy, or indeed dies in a 
fire or of a gunshot to the head or departs in any one of the usual 
thousand-and-one ways which can make the bio-conservative approach a sad 
joke.  Someone dying today faces the strong possibility of severe, severe 
ischemic damage.  Period.

Bearing all this in mind -- and bearing in mind too that scientific 
breakthroughs follow money, and that the nanotechnological ideas of 'fringe' 
MIT Professor Eric Drexler have led to an eighty billion dollar research 
effort funded by everyone from Kodak, Xerox, the National Institute of 
Health, the Army, Navy, Germany,  Japan, etc etc, on down -- CI has reached 
the position that if there is any hope, it lies in the in the subsequent 
repair of ischemic damage, and therefore with the future of nanotechnology 
specifically.  Not in the (arguably) only marginally less inept damage 
currently inflicted by bio-conservative technique, with its -- dare I say, 
'false hope'-- that circumstances will just magically fall into place and 
that that technique will be applied in spic-and-span laboratory conditions.  
CI has also noted, with dismay, that the bio-conservative approach runs 
suspension prices up to the point where the elderly, the uninsurable, the 
ill, the 'poor' (if we can apply that word with a straight face to someone 
with under $120,000+ in pocket money), and indeed the average American and 
his family are simply written off as walking corpses and left to die like 
dogs.  Writing off this majority incidentally cements cryonics into being a 
marginal enterprise, constricts it's ability to raise funds and so conduct 
research, etc etc.

In short, the techno-radical position seems to have the financial edge, the 
scientific edge, the realistic edge, the marketing edge, and the humanitarian 
edge; so CI has gone with it.

Be it noted!  CI does *not* go around bad-mouthing 21CM or Greg Fahy or even 
Charles Platt; *nor* does it flatly reject the bio-conservative approach.  CI 
supports and advocates research; CI too thinks you should get to a patient as 
quickly as possible and take as good care of him or her as you can, all 
things considered.  But *all* things *have* to be considered.  It isn't just 
a case of saying, "Well, in the abstract, under perfect laboratory 
conditions, technique A here is marginally superior to technique B."  If 
Charles were trying to peddle cryonics to white lab rats, maybe that would be 
the way to go.  But no human I know dies under laboratory conditions.  You 
have to look at the real world of people's finances, and clogged air traffic, 
and relatives freaking out at the mention of neurosuspension and all that 
stuff, and give the person the best real-world chance, and the most plausible 
hope, that you can.

For me, that means CI. That's why I'm a CI member.  Not an officer, not a 
director, not a staffer; I don't get a paycheck from CI or make a penny off 
of them, I'm just a guy who's looked at all the providers, and I believe 
that, all things considered, my odds are a lot better with CI than any other 
provider.  It's not that I've got one foot in the grave, or or can't make out 
them big words in cryobiology journals, or am old or sick or broke.  I'm in 
my early forties, I belong to Mensa, and I could afford to fund a suspension 
with any cryonics orgaization -- hell, with all of them put together.  I know 
exactly what happens when a CI patient gets suspended:  I stood there and 
watched one take place from beginnning to end.  And yes indeed, I've read the 
BPI briefs and weighed Charles Platt's acid critisms and looked at neurons 
and synapses in microphotograph after damned microphotograph.  And I still 
believe that CI offers me -- and cryonics -- the very best real-world shot.  
Believe it, hell: I'm willing to bet my life on it.  But more important than 
maintaining my own little ego, I support CI because I think it offers to the 
most people, to the 'poor', to the sick and elderly, to the 'average' men and 
women of this world who don't have the good luck to be Wired correspondents 
like Charles or yuppie consultants like me, the only realistic chance they 
have; and that CI's way offers the cryonics movement the only way to break 
out of the masturbatory self-centered technobabble elitism that's crippled 
and marginalized it all these thirty years.

But while I think that CI is the *best* alternative, I want to *emphasize* 
that I am not *attacking* the bio-conservative approach.  Research is good; 
painstaking care is wonderful; rapid response is excellent; all organizations 
should strive for it, and all members should applaud and support it.  We 
should all open our pockets and fund 21CM night and day.  Research is the 
Holy Grail, and though I expect the final breakthrough will come at Xerox 
PARC or the Zyvex Corporation rather than through perfusing some mutt in 
Scottsdale, it's *not an either/or situation*.  It isn't like Mike Darwin is 
a divine guarantee of zero ischemia, and loping ogre Eric Drexler is some 
drooling 'fringe' dolt shunned by chaste and saintly biologists.  Both sides 
have merit; both sides have substance; both roads are worth taking; 
travellers on either deserve praise and support, not blame and criticism.  
We're not enemies.  We've got the same goals and the same hopes; we're just 
trying to reach them by different paths.  What's wrong with that?

Why not just go to the people and put our cases to them plainly and let them 
make their own decision, without cutting each other up?  We need to make the 
best case *for* our position, not *against* some other guy's.  You want 
funding?  Write a fund-raising letter!  Don't slam Eric Drexler or Ralph 
Merkle or Bob Ettinger.  Hell, Bob Ettinger was thinking about the effects of 
ischemia on brain cells before Charles Platt *had* any brain cells to get 
ischemia with!  Can't we grant that the man's views may have some tiny 
validity.  Drexler has a doctorate in molecular nanotechnology from MIT!  
He's been profiled by Time, interviewed by Al Gore and the vice chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  This is 'fringe'?  Can't we allow that -- just 
maybe -- we might follow in the footprints of the Jonint Chiefs and listen to 
what he's saying, rather than judge him on the basis of some poll of 
biologists that never took place?

What is so damned hard about walking up to people and saying, "Hi, I'm with 
CI/CryoCare/Alcor.  I think cryonics is a good idea and I think the 
particular approach our organization has worked out is the best way to 
provide it.  Other organizations have different approaches, of course.  Why 
don't you take a look at what we think and do and why, and then take a look 
at what they say, and how they do it, and then make your own decision?"  Is 
this so tough?  For God's sake, there are five *billion* people in this 
world, but do we take our case to *them*?  No, we get on our own private 
little mailing list and go on about how scholars and professors and 
researchers are 'fringe'.  What a waste of misdirected effort.

<<Sorry not to share your positivism about this.>>

I'm sorry too.

You know -- Charles Platt is a puzzle.  Make no mistake:  Charles Platt has 
done as much for the cryonics movement as anyone.  He's joined up, he's 
written about it, he's stood up for it, he's served as an official, he's 
studied it, he's promoted it, he's gone out on actual suspensions -- 
everything.  Commitment is not something you say; commitment is something you 
do.  As an activist Charles Platt has done so much -- certainly so much more 
than me -- that I'm almost ashamed to criticize him.  And I certainly 
understand how difficult his experiences have been.  I once read a post by 
Charles in which he talked about a suspension case where the patient in 
question died in a accident and was autopsied horribly.  After the 
frustration of seeing this pointless butchery performed, Charles and the guy 
with him had to drive back to their facilities carrying pieces of the poor 
man's brain is separate plastic bags.  And yet Charles did the right and 
honorable thing, giving it the very best he could, even trying to keep things 
going with some gallows humor.  Yet -- what horror.  What abysmal, unnecesary 
stupidity.  How is it possible not to lose hope sometimes, not to rage at the 
stupidity around you on every side, not to be give up in despair and disgust? 
 Well -- Charles Platt has not.  He works for cryonics, argues for it, writes 
about it, gives to it.  We could do with a million men of this caliber.

But his curse is that he's an artist; a gifted and talented writer, tipsy 
with the cutting power of his rhetoric, and with a weakness for overstatement 
-- and for despair.  If you're fighting for critical recognition, it's a 
strength; if you're fighting to save human lives, it's isn't a strength.  
It's a weakness that -- forgive me, Charles -- can kill people.  I dread the 
day that some dying old woman with 'only' $40,000 will click onto Alcor's web 
site, and look at that impossible $120,000 price tag and no mention of an 
alternative, and just simply turn away and die.  Or the day some father whose 
kid's leukemia has left him with 'only' $120,000 reads a Charles Platt post 
and hears Charles give 'scientific' ten-thousand-to-one odds against success 
and -- gives up hope and lets the kid go.  We need hope.  We may none of us 
make it; but we may; and to do that, we have to believe that we *can*.  And 
if there really *is* evidence to suggest that there is hope, and that we can 
make it?  Bitter, pitiless, merciless realism suggests that we acknowledge it 
-- and smile.

Positivism is not a blank set of facts; it is an attitude one holds towards 
facts.  Sometimes it is, and has to be, a matter of will.  Sometimes you have 
to deliberately choose hope and deliberately reject despair, regardless of 
how tired you are or how tempting it is.  It isn't a matter of falsifying or 
minimizing unpleasant facts.  Being negative can be as self-indulgent and 
sentimental as being positive, and being positive can be as hawk-like and 
precise and realistic as being negative.  It's a matter of recognizing that 
understanding deepens and facts change. If the odds are not enough with us, 
we can change them -- through thought, effort, research, innovation, 
imagination. Cryonics is a science but it is also a will.   But that will is 
as dependent on spiritual effort as that science is on research efforts.  And 
both require entertaining, however grudgingly, the possibility of hope.  
Charles feels rightly that blind faith is blind and false hope is false; but 
not all faith is blind, and not all hope is false.  Every criticism is not 
decisive, every hope is not deceptive.  Let us all support cryonics like 
Charles Platt -- with our efforts.  But let's not sink into hopelessness as 
we do it.  The facts don't merit it.

David Pascal
www.cryonics.org
www.davidpascal.com

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12019