X-Message-Number: 15333
From: 
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 11:49:50 EST
Subject: Fahy

Cryonet message # 15324 from Paul Wakfer, appearing on 1/12/01, carried 
embedded in it a message from Gregory M. Fahy, Ph.D., director of research 
for the INC (Institute for Neural Cryobiology), titled "HSCP Progress Report 
and Plans." (HSCP is the hippocampal slice cryopreservation project.) I 
believe Dr. Fahy is also lead scientist at 21CM. He is a veteran 
cryobiologist with many published papers as well as patents to his credit, a 
vitrification pioneer, and has also been associated with cryonics since he 
was a teen ager. We raised him from a pup, in a manner of speaking.

In years past, at the Naval Medical Research Institute (also at the American 
Red Cross?) his supervisor (or similar term) was Harold Meryman, a senior 
cryobiologist and heavyweight in the Society for Cryobiology. This Society, 
as newcomers may not know, many years ago adopted an official policy that 
advocates of cryonics could not be members. The Society publishes the journal 
called CRYOBIOLOGY, which has published many papers by Fahy; and recently 
work by Wowk, Darwin, Harris et al--people well known in cryonics.

When Fahy was working under Meryman, my clear impression was that Meryman 
knew perfectly well about Fahy's cryonics connections, but was willing to 
overlook them as long as they weren't too public or blatant. So Greg was 
always nervous about publicity.

As a sidelight, I have correspondence from Meryman, many years ago, showing 
that his antipathy to cryonics has religious or/and ideological roots--he 
doesn't think human life should be extended beyond the "natural" span. (Yes, 
pretty ironic for a cryobiologist, not to mention a physician!) 

As another sidelight, in my amateur opinion, if any scientist were to be 
expelled from the Society for Cryobiology, or refused membership, because his 
scientific opinion tended to favor cryonics, the Society would be in big 
trouble. Its tax exemption would be in jeopardy, not to mention its 
scientific reputation and its legal liability for damages.

Now, there have been requests--including relatively recent ones--that Fahy's 
name not appear on Cryonet, still for fear of damaging his career in some 
way. I made no promise to honor such requests, but nevertheless have not 
mentioned his name on Cryonet recently, as far as I can recall. With Wakfer's 
post, containing the message signed by Fahy, things have changed a bit.

On the CI web site, for the last couple of years, we have posted extensive 
quotations from Fahy's 1988 sworn deposition to a California court in the 
case of Dora Kent, made under penalty of perjury--a public document. (See our 
web site for the exact specification.) It contains relatively optimistic 
statements about the chances of cryonics patients--not only those frozen by 
the Alcor techniques of that time, but also, by implication, for any case 
where "some attention was paid to providing at least token cryoprotection." 
He also said that "in some cases good preservation has been documented in the 
complete absence of reasonable cryobiological technique." 

Obviously, the question of "authority" has two sides to it. On the one hand, 
there are skilled and knowledgeable people with no academic credentials 
whatever, e.g. Darwin (Federowicz). Also, "authorities" are often wrong. On 
the other hand, everyone likes to have his own opinion supported by people 
who can reasonably be said to be "authoritative," and when other things are 
equal it makes sense to give more weight to "authoritative" opinion. But the 
cruel dilemma that everyone always faces in controversial matters is the 
problem of making quantitative decisions--how much weight to give to which 
items of evidence, how much weight to mere assertions of authority, etc. We 
can only invest as much time and effort as we are willing or able to do, and 
then place our bets and take our chances.

I believe that most people who make a serious study of available material, 
based both on available facts and on credentials, will tend to favor 
cryonics, if their conditioning doesn't get in the way. And we know--the 
numbers show--that a majority of the new people currently favor CI.

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

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