X-Message-Number: 13622 Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 08:41:31 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #13579 - #13586 Some comments for cryonicists and those who are thinking about it: One major reason for signing up now has not been mentioned but is in practice much more substantial than the risk that you might die. Simple: you may come down with a condition which makes life insurance either impossible or so expensive that you cannot afford it. Such conditions, as you can also guess, often cut considerably into your earning power, too. You may discover that you have such a condition at the age of 25 or earlier; sure, you may still live for a long time, but lots of options have been cut off from you... and unless you're lucky, cryonics may well be one of those options. At present the only such condition I know of for which life insurance comapanies will write insurance is diabetes. Naturally they charge much more for this service. If anyone knows of other insurance for those with other conditions, I'd like to hear of it (and so would Cryonet). Again, it's simply false what life insurance isn't available in many advanced countries. It may be hard for a life insurance agent living and working in the US to write such policies, but that does not mean that it does not exist. I have lived in Australia over 2 periods: the first one I broke by coming to the US in 1985. In all that time I had no trouble finding insurors who would write me a policy. Yes, I also got US policies, but that came not from my residence in the US but simply from visits to the US. I was fully insured and signed up when at the age of 44 I found that I had a brain tumor (which I survived, but also found afterwards that life insurance was virtually impossible to find). Yes, the fact that I'd had a brain tumor also cut considerably into MY earning power, too (for a few good reasons and lots of bad ones). As for using other financial options, I too have been saving my money and could pay for an Alcor head suspension even without insurance. But that ability came some time AFTER my brain tumor, and I might have eventually simply died of it, or even worse, had it slowly grow worse and making any kind of work literally impossible. In that way I am lucky, too. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13622