X-Message-Number: 17445 From: "George Smith" <> References: <> Subject: Optimism is too pessimistic to be realistic. Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 13:30:24 -0700 Lately I have been agreeing with Charles Platt on a number of issues but there seems to be one area where we just don't see eye to eye. In his Message #17441 regarding plastination, Charles pointed out the problem of perfusion and I agree. But then he discusses our ongoing point of disagreement when he wrote: > This still strikes me as the major failing in cryonics: An unsupported > conviction that Santa-Claus-like scientists of tomorrow will perform, at > virtually no charge, the challenging little chores that we haven't quite > succeeded in completing ourselves. Quite apart from the questionable > ethics of this attitude, it presents a problem when trying to sell > cryonics to cautious potential clients who have a healthily skeptical, as > opposed to a diehard optimistic, attitude toward the future. Technological advancements have NOT followed a simple straight line growth over the last century. These advancements look more and more like a hockey stick with gradual spurts in the early 1900s followed by incredible exponential leaps over the last 25 years. If we do, however, conservatively assume a straight line improvement projection for the next 100 years then it seems quite probable that EVERY problem in successfully resuscitating cryonics patients will be overcome. Accompany me on this short and biased walk through the last 100 years. Imagine it is the year 1901. 100 years ago. Anesthesia is now routinely used in surgery and childbirth, and surgeons now finally wash their hands before performing surgery. Most human beings die in early childhood. Even minor infections will still kill you. 1906 - Harden discovered catalysis among enzymes. 1907 - Ross Harrison develops tissue culture techniques. 1909 - T.H. Morgan starts to research genetics. 1914 - Alexis Carrel performs the first successful open heart surgery on a dog. 1916 - Blood for transfusion is refrigerated. 1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin. 1930 - Karl Landsteiner receives the Nobel Prize for identifying blood grouping making transfusions viable. 1933 - Nobel Prize goes to Thomas Hunt Morgan for discovering that chromosomes transmit hereditary functions. 1935 - Gerhard Domagk discovered the first sulfa drug for treating strep infections. 1937 - Insulin is used to control diabetes. 1939 - Phillip Levine and Rufus Stetson discover the Rh factor in human blood and thereby make my birth possible. 1943 Penicillin successfully used in treatment of chronic diseases 16 years after its discovery. 1944 Streptomycin is used against TB. Other antibiotics followed and became cheaper and easier to manufacture. Imagine it is the year 1951. 50 years ago. Antibiotics now allow you to NOT almost certainly die if bitten by a cat (this saves my life in the 1980's). J. Andre-Thomas devises a heart-lung machine for heart operations. Polio still cripples many children. 1953 - A link between smoking and lung cancer is advanced. 1954 - Jonas E. Salk develops polio vaccine and children are inoculated. I don't get polio. 1962 - Crick, Wilkins and Watson discover the molecular structure of DNA. 1963 - First use of an artificial heart for use during heart surgery. 1966 - Michael De Bakey implants plastic arteries during heart valve replacement surgery. 1967 Stanford University biochemists produce synthetic DNA and Chrisstian Bernard performs first human heart transplant operation. 1970 - Successful implantation of heart pacemakers. 1971 - Choh Hao Li synthesizes HGH. 1976 - MIT announces construction of a functional synthetic gene complete with regulatory mechanisms. That was 25 years ago. Since then we have successful cloning, common organ transplants, and more medical research scientists alive than ever lived lumped together throughout all of history. Today if someone is shot in the abdomen with a gun the chances are excellent they will recover. Political arguments rage over the rights of "test tube babies" and the role of human cloning. Last year the human genome was mapped. If I had been born in the 1800's I would have been born dead. If I had survived birth I would have died from the numerous infections due to animal bites I sustained over the years. The significance of the last 100 years of medical research is not lost on me! I would not be typing these words otherwise. I would be dead. The area in which Charles and I disagree is simply one of degree. I try to imagine what will be possible in 100 MORE years and my mind boggles with the probable situation. In 1901 what would leading medical researchers have said if you suggested that it would be possible to transplant organs and install artificial joints, bones, blood vessels, etc.? Yet here we are, doing all that and much more on a routine basis. The "Santa Claus scientists" of TODAY are performing on a routine basis what their counterparts in 1901 would have considered impossible. I simply do not find it any stretch of the imagination to suppose that in 100 MORE years, FUTURE "Santa Claus scientists" WILL be able to gift common humanity with what we would now consider miracles. It's just a conservative straight line projection from 1901 to 2101 which causes me to feel optimism. When the human body is at liquid nitrogen temperatures for all practical purposes everything biological is arrested. At that point we can WAIT for what the next 100 years (or more) will discover and make commonplace. This isn't some wild eyed faith in the future. My optimism is based on what I consider to be a very conservative view of history. My life has been saved TWICE by what has ALREADY happened. I do not find it difficult to see it happening yet again. What Charles refers to a "healthily skeptical ... attitude" I see as a total disregard of the thrust of history within even just the last 100 years projected forward. "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - Winton Churchill What have we learned? That the future will almost certainly be just as mind blowing in what WILL come from OUR perspective as it was for the people who were "healthily skeptical" 100 years ago. This seems to me to be the simplest thing in the world to grasp. That human beings are future myopic is a historical fact but not a rational justification. Everyone reading these words should be smarter than that. "Cautious potential clients" who don't sign up will be dead if they are not just damned lucky. (Good luck, y'all!) What is the "questionable" ethical choice then for such people? The only choices I see are between certain death or possible survival. Get with it. MERE optimism is far too pessimistic to keep up with the future that is accelerating at us. What is coming will be better than what we CAN imagine. Just my opinion ... based on a mere straight line projection of our history to date. Yet the advances are actually going exponential. It is really dishonest for me to hobble the future to a straight line projection when ALL the trending evidence points to exponential growth. The only reason I rely on this lie is to underline the incredible reality that history is pointing us toward. I need a better word than "optimistic" to describe the resulting attitude based on the advancing facts of history. How about "realistic"? Yes. That seems about right. George Smith CI member Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17445