X-Message-Number: 13797
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 10:15:05 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: 1 question and more for Pizer

Hi everyone!

One minor question almost irrelevant to cryonics or immortality: as
some of you may know, there was a coup in Fiji about a week ago, with
a small group holding its parliament hostage. This issue still continues,
and has started to cause some bloodshed (it didn't at the start).

So just how much news about this coup has there been in the US press?
Who in the US has even heard about it? 

And for more pertinent matters:

To Dave Pizer, I will say that the abolition of aging (which may well
not happen all at once) is very much not the same as literal immortality 
ie. the total abolition of Death. This means that even if we totally
ceased to die of old age, we'd still be risking death from other causes,
and given technological advances, many of these causes simply don't
exist right now (just as death from excessive X-radiation did not occur
in the 18th Century ... for that matter, even death from auto wrecks
did not occur then. Or from mistakes in surgery, or the effects of deep
diving, or lots of other things).

If you are seriously arguing that we'll reach a state in which we can
cure ALL existing diseases and problems, fix the effects of ALL accidents,
and so on and on, I think it's you who need to give some arguments. 
It's especially important that we'll very likely meet with new conditions
never encountered in the 20th Century --- we simply can't assume that
EVERYTHING will either be totally curable or provably impossible to fix.

It is this more than anything else which convinces me that we'll need
some form of cryonics into the indefinite future. Not only that, but
just as people still ride horses, not for play but because they are 
the best choice for the circumstances, that we can expect poor suspensions,
or suspensions done with methods which aren't the most modern. We may
very well develop methods which provably allow revival of our brains,
but it simply doesn't follow that such methods will be ALWAYS applicable:
what if you run into problems while hiking in New Guinea? Or Brazil's
jungles? Or your body simply isn't found for a while, even though 
you managed when dying to keep yourself cold?

Most important, it simply doesn't take lots of people to keep lots of
suspendees in storage. Even now we've seen methods to automate big
parts of the job. And anyone who does that can use his/her spare time
to work on finding ways to bring those patients back. 

These are all reasons why I strongly doubt that we need a very high
proportion of the population, or a large number of people, to ultimately
care for and revive those now suspended. I personally find it very hard
to believe that people who aren't troubled by aging won't still worry
about all the OTHER things that can happen to them. And such people will
be those who continue interested in cryonics... whether or not they
have relatives in suspension.

Please understand: I am NOT saying that people will die at the same
rate as now. I am simply pointing out that some people will die, and
they won't know their fate until too late. That alone provides a good
reason for cryonics, on into the indefinite future. And if Alcor is
still growing even at a few % per year, so long as the number of 
Alcor cryonicists continues to increase then the number of people 
available to support research will also increase (not fast, but it
would still increase). The real condition which would worry me is if
FEWER people joined than got suspended, which isn't the current 
situation at all. As for other societies, I don't know their condition,
and perhaps they should worry... though I suspect that they may be
smaller but still are growing.

And do I want to see more growth, and better suspensions? Most
certainly. In that sense I agree with you that an increase in rate
would be a GOOD THING. But I still believe that cryonics will work
even if it continues indefinitely to be an activity of a small 
% of the population.

		Best to all and long long life to all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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