X-Message-Number: 1249
From: 
Subject: CRYONICS
Date: Thu,  1 Oct 92 16:33:41 PDT

Brian Wowk writes:

>Keith Henson:
> 
>> BTW, I could well be wrong, but my best guess is that far fewer than 
>> 10,000 patients will be suspended before they start being revived, and 
>> the practice of cryonics is relegated to the history books.  (Arel's 
>> estimate is fewer than 500.)
> 
>        I think this is completely unrealistic.  At present growth rates 
>one can conservatively project 500 people in suspension near the turn of 
>the century, and 10,000 people in suspension by the year 2010.  Are you 
>suggesting that there will be no terminal illnesses left in 20 years?

Brian, I worked the numbers recently and I think I came up with a 
very rough doubling time of three years for suspension patients, 
which is roughly the same as the number who are signed up.  For 
500 by the turn you are projecting a factor of 20 in under 8 
years, and another factor of 20 in the next ten years.   Even a 
factor of 16 is four doublings in 8 years, or one doubling every 
two years.  (I am using Alcor numbers because the base and growth 
rates of the other organizations are much smaller.)  Is doubling 
suspension patients every two years reasonable?  For Alcor, that 
would mean suspending *25* over the next 24 months.  Well----it
could happen, I suppose.  If it seems likely, finding Alcor a new 
location becomes critical, since we would really have them wedged 
in with another 25 in that building.  It seems difficult for the 
number of suspension patients go up at a faster exponential rate 
than the signed up ones--for very long anyway. 

All Alcor suspensions except for the last three are listed in the 
July _Cryonics_.  Someone might want to run the data through a
regression program, but don't give too much weight to the end 
data points, there are *no* patients on our watch list at the 
moment; statistically, I expect about one more this year (which 
means I would not be surprised by zero, one, or two.

The end of cryonics (not last out, but when people quit going in) 
is harder to project, but interest in nanotechnology is growing 
rapidly, as is the money spent on things which contribute to 
progress in this area.  Current projections by those most 
knowledgeable (which everyone admits are just informed guesses) 
centers around 2013.  That would give us 21 years or about 7 
doublings--in round numbers about a hundred times the current 
number of 25.  Delay nanotech by another six to eight years, and 
you do indeed get to 10k patients.

Re cerebral ischemic injury, I would assume that even fairly 
early nanotechnology would be up to keeping your heart going. 

Exponential growth projections depend rather critically on our 
assumptions.  Well, we shall see. 

Keith Henson

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1249