X-Message-Number: 14148 Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 10:21:58 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: comments and praise Some comments on time, self, etc: 1. The piece by Brent Thomas is very good and may provide additional ideas to the work by 21st Century Medicine on nonbiological substances which help vitrification. 2. To Bob Ettinger, I'd point out that your discussion of saving various memories in the sense its advocates now mean (ie. we make films or write them down) has lots of gaps, not least of which is whether and how such memories can be read into our brain in any other sense than when we sit down and watch the film and/or read the writing. It's just such difficulties which cause me to raise that question. Someday we may well be able to read off our brain and store our memories in some other form. Reloading memories in THAT form is quite different from what is now being proposed. The difference is essential. I would say the same about the various treatments attempted on those with diseases which cause loss of memory. 3. Telomerase may not be the automatic rescue that its original proponents suggested. A letter in the 15 June issue of NATURE describes infecting human mammary cells with the section of telomerase which increases the telomere regions at the end of chromosomes. Unfortunately it also seems to activate an oncogene, c-myc. No, I don't mean here that telomerase is useless, and we should forget about it. Not at all. But making ourselves immortal is very unlikely to be done by modifying only one small part of our metabolism. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14148