X-Message-Number: 1292 Date: 11 Oct 92 02:09:56 EDT From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Re: cryonics: #1244 Hi Brian! I know I'm a bit late on this particular debate, but it's a subject I've thought about for some time. Basically, I've already given my arguments to Keith Henson on this subject: I don't believe that the need for long term storage of patients (which we now do with freezing, but may not do with freezing forever) will EVER disappear. Sure, there will be a peak in the number of patients suspended per year, followed by a slow decline. But the number will never actually go to zero. Why? Because we are NEVER going to understand ALL possible injuries so well that we can immediately repair them or even state that they will be repairable. Certainly, we will someday completely understand all lthe PRESENT kinds of injuries, including ischemic brain injury --- but that's not the point. As we go into space and take up new styles of life, new inventions, and so forth, there will always be the rare fiendish accident which messes someone up in a way we can't even specify right now (since after all we haven't YET taken up thos new styles of life, etc etc). Certainly we might keep copies of ourselves in places which we BELIEVE are safe. We can do lots of things. That merely decreases the probability without taking it to zero. And there is a sting at the tail of this decrease in probability, too. Remember that (unlike the present) we will then think of ourselves as having lifespans of millenia, tens or hundreds of thousands of years; and so events which we would now simply shrug about (asteroid impacts on the Earth, the aging of the Sun, etc etc) become real problems to us as we try to live for our "allotted 10 million year lifespan". So the rarity of a need for long term storage will be measured not against our lifespans of today but against those of tomorrow: and that may not even seem very rare at all. Best Thomas Donaldsn Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1292