X-Message-Number: 13199 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: will reversible cryopreservation REALLY solve recruitment? Date: Sat, 5 Feb 100 12:58:51 +1100 (EST) Hi everyone! Will reversible cryopreservation help cryonics? I do not claim any keys to public response, but here are some major points about cryonics which suggest that it will not. First of all, the purpose of cryonics is to avoid DEATH. When you are "dead" as seen by the public, reversible freezing doesnt matter to you at all. Even if you are suspended BEFORE you (officially, publicly, die) you will do so in a situation in which no one really knows when your condition will become curable. The number of cases of someone dying from a condition which doctors and experts can confidently predict the arrival of cures in the near future is miniscule. Sure, there's plenty of research on lots of conditions which are now fatal, but when that research will bear fruit remains unknown. That's what research is ABOUT. Would reversible cryopreservation cause perfectly healthy people to decide to be frozen? That would require a prior wide consensus that those frozen must be kept so INDEFINITELY. Why would such a consensus arise? And if that consensus did not exist, and you are perfectly healthy, you would be taking a risk that various agencies would decide that you ought not to have been frozen and should instead contribute to society. They will either wake you up and ask for you to work for them, or simply let you thaw out with no attempt to revive you at all. Yes, if CRYONICS became common, reversible cryopreservation would follow, and healthy people might make such a decision. But that is not the present situation at all. It is cryonics which must happen beforehand. I make these points not because I oppose current research to improve our methods at all. I am strongly in favor of such research. HOWEVER our real barrier is attitudes toward death and old age which think of them either as inevitable or right & proper. If we work out reversible cryopreservation for healthy animals, it will greatly improve our OWN confidence that (at least when these methods can be applied, which will never be always, and may start as rare) one link in the chain of our revival has been forged and is ready. Just what it will do to cryonics IN PUBLIC remains an open question. Most important, we should not so blithely assume that such an achievement will cause much change at all in public attitudes to cryonics. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13199