X-Message-Number: 1712
From: Ben Best <>
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 19:00:00 -0500
Subject: canadian cryonics dinner


   The Canadian Cryonics Dinner of January 30 coincided with Toronto's
worst snowstorm thus far this winter. Although a number of people were
evidently prevented from attending, 9 hardy souls braved the elements
to converge on the Korona Restaurant. With extropian "dynamic
optimism", one person declared that he enjoyed the challenge of
driving in the snow. It was evident that parking places were easy
to find and the restaurant was not crowded.

   Dr. Malcolm Ramsay, our guest of honor (and a member of the Cryonics
Society of Canada Scientific Advisory Board), was returning from a
Polar Bear conference in Copenhagen, Denmark to Saskatchewan, via
Toronto. Although Canada has about half of the world's polar bear
population (12,000 out of 25,000), Dr. Ramsay is the only native
Canadian polar bear scientist in Canada. The conference in Copenhagen
had been attended by all of the practicing polar bear PhDs in the
world (9 in all).

   Dr. Ramsay informed us that there are species of bats that hibernate
at low temperature and have life-spans of 30 years. Bats are mammals,
yet other mammals of the same size rarely live longer than two years.
He sees no reason why this kind of low temperature hibernation couldn't
be artificially induced in other mammals -- or even humans. And with the
same order-of-magnitude increase in years of survival. Thus, a human
being with ten years of life remaining could expect to remain alive
for 150 to 200 years or so -- being awakened periodically to urinate,
etc. We speculated on the type of person who might opt for this
procedure, on the legal issues and on the comparative advantage or
disadvantage as compared to cryonics.

    The conversation ranged through many other topics, most of which
were related to cryonics or life extension. All in all, it was a
consciousness-raising (meme-spreading) experience whch may reap
future benefits beyond an enjoyable dinner.

                   -- Ben Best (ben.best%)
--
Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044

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