X-Message-Number: 16831 From: "Trygve Bauge" <> References: <000501c0d31c$51313be0$> Subject: The future of immortality. Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 00:15:39 +0200 Cryogenicist explains life-extending technologies. Copyrighted 2001 by Trygve Bauge (47)22-14-80-78. All rights reserved, copyfee charged. Contact the author for permission to reproduce this interview. (Permission is granted for posting this on , on the , on the home pages of Plausible futures www.plausiblefutures.com/ and on Trygve's own web page: www.trygve.bauge.com ). Trygve Bauge (43) has his grandfather cryonically suspended Mr. Bauge is kind enough to answer questions concerning the future of immortality. What scientific or technological developments supports the theory of reanimation after cryonic suspension? Free floating cells like sperm cells, fertilized egg cells, and tissues that have been separated into individual cells, and cell cultures of the latter, can today be frozen, stored and thawed out in such a way that they still are alive. As I see it, research on freezing free floating cells without the formation of ice crystals, a process called vitrification, will open for organs and organisms being frozen alive and brought back alive. Sooner or later someone will identify the genes that enable certain organisms to survive freezing, and then add these genes to other animals and future generations of human beings. I would certainly like to give life to a clone that also has received the genes necessary to survive cryonic suspensions. Whether or not we will be able to later restore to life people that have been frozen after death, still remains to be seen. We might first have to find a way to clone live organisms, tissues and organs from DNA fragments in dead cells. What ethical dimensions exists when considering plans for your own cryonic suspension? I hold personal life-extension as my motivation, will, highest goal, philosophy, moral system, legal system, profession, venture combination and way of life. I would like not to die, and I would like to be suspended when I die. I also regard as a crime against humanity, any attempt at outlawing cryonic suspensions or human cloning. I hold that people attempting to outlaw cloning or cryonics should receive life in prisonment without parole, as should anyone willfully destroying cryonic storage facilities, people in suspension, cell samples and cloned organisms that belong to others. Running out of funds to maintain a facility is not necessarily a crime but I do regard as crimes: government interventions that drive up the price of cryonic suspensions. Advanced genetic therapy could expand the average lifespan with unknown number of years. How do you think political institutions would respond to this and other technologies that could change the demography of any given state? Most likely they will respond rationally, see the advantages and respond accordingly. E.g. if people age slower, they could stay healthier longer, work more years and retire later, that is an untapped resource that could enable us to solve many problems not solved today. How should immortals or wanne-be-immortals organize to promote their own goals? On the internet one could search for words like extropians, cryonics etc. and then join mailing lists like the extropian digest, cryonet etc. To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to: with the subject line (not message _body_): subscribe To subscribe to the extropian digest: You can subscribe via the Web. Go to http://www.extropy.org then use the link to the Extropian e-mail list sub site. Or, send a request to: People might also find it useful to practice the Gerson therapy http://www.gerson.org so to benefit from its rejuvenating effects. And to join any objectivist newsgroup like http://alt.philosophy.objectivism or http://humanities.philosophy.objectivism so to take advantage of a rational philosophy. And to take entrepreneurship classes or participate in competitions like Venture Cup www.venturecup.com so to better become successful entrepreneurs. Of course they could form or join special interest groups, health building clubs, political action groups, private ventures etc. and work to establish constitutionally chartered freeports international free travel and trade zones, and health retreats, cryonic laboratories, and sheltered infrastructures in such freeports around the world. In the short run the richer part of the life-extending community could buy suites in projects like the Residensea www.residensea.com a set of floating villages, so to better escape taxes, prohibitions and other government interventions like laws against vitamins, cloning etc. How could life-extending technologies change human evolution? As said above we might add to future generations the genes necessary to survive being frozen alive. I also foresee that we gain a better knowledge of what that constitutes a human being, so that the experience of being can be enhanced. At first this might benefit the blind and the deaf. These might get to see and hear. But further down the road we might be able to improve the link between an original donor and a clone, so that these will share the same consciousness. Or rather so that the same consciousness will dwell in several clones, and thereby survive if and when any of these inadvertenly die. Would immortals reproduce? Yes, we will continue to reproduce, but when people age slower, more people will on average wait longer to get kids, thus there won't necessarily be more of us around. More and more people might decide to get cloned instead of having kids the old way. People would still form relationships, have cloned embryos implanted, and raise clones of both parents instead of and in addition to regular kids. When I was deported from the United States in 1994, it was not because of my cryonic ventures, but because I made a proud legal stand in favour of freedom of travel and trade as an unalienable human right, and against the protectionism so prevalent in the United States today. As I see it life-extension and freedom of travel and trade go hand in hand. We won't get the former without the latter. Thus let me use this opportunity to call for the removal of all travel and trade barriers, (all custom-, passport-, visa- and work permit- requirements,) first between the United States and EU, and then so that still larger parts of the world is added to the same international free travel and trade zone. Long life to you all, Trygve Bauge Ps. Ole Petter who first asked for this interview, would like to hear from cryonisists that can give him the names and web sites for other classical texts on life-extension like: The Prospect of Immortality http://www.cryonics.org/contents1.html Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16831