X-Message-Number: 15200
From: 
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 12:54:47 EST
Subject: media, SfC etc

In recent years, media coverage of cryonics has gradually become more 
positive, or at least less negative.

A recent Detroit News article featured Cryonics Institute. We knew from the 
outset, from his questions, that the writer intended a negative spin, but we 
still allowed him and his cameraman to visit our facility and answered his 
questions forthrightly, as usual.

The result did indeed have a negative bias. The article mentioned that CI 
"membership has doubled in the last few years," but the headline read 
"Cryonics revolution stalls, leaving movement in limbo." Well, anyone with 
the least experience with journalists knows that accuracy, objectivity, and 
competence are sometime things, and we have to live with reality.

But such articles always have follow-ons. The Saginaw News (Saginaw being 
another Michigan city) carried essentially the same information, but the 
headline and subhead read: "The dawn of a new ice age?" "Freezing bodies in 
liquid nitrogen becoming more popular as a way to fight old age."

Some reported radio discussions on Michigan stations were also positive.

To help us further in future, let me reiterate my request that physicians and 
scientists, who are members of CI or other organizations, file notes with us 
if they are willing to be interviewed as proponents of cryonics. Such 
availability could have non-negligible effect on our growth and progress.

Along with this, let me repeat my opinion or guesswork--for whatever it may 
be worth--that if some cryobiologists in cryonics are afraid of coming out of 
the closet, for fear of ostracism or retaliation or expulsion by the Society 
for Cryobiology, they are afraid of a toothless bogeyman. 

In might in fact be a heaven-sent opportunity if the Society did expel 
someone, already recognized in cryobiology through publication in a 
recognized journal, perhaps including Cryobiology, the journal of the Society 
for Cryobiology--for a difference of scientific opinion!!! Such scientists, 
with our financial backing, could file suit for damages and defamation, 
leading to public hearings with expert witnesses and sworn testimony and 
cross examination. How marvelous! They would finally be cornered!

It might not be totally inappropriate to remind readers that one organization 
we know spent years of extremely expensive litigation 
fighting--successfully!--certain illegal activities of the Food and Drug 
Adminstration. And the FDA was a MUCH more powerful, ruthless, well-financed, 
and generally formidable foe than the SfC would be.

Of course, we know that individuals may have employers or family who are so 
hostile or so fearful that a personal risk of some sort might really be 
involved, and we cannot demand personal sacrifices. But my feeling is that, 
in many cases, the risk is more perceived than real.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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