X-Message-Number: 18958
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Wisdom from the last century.
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 13:16:06 -0700

Gentlemen,

Heart failure is death.  It is now and always shall be.

I read these preposterous suggestions from some who dare call themselves
"physician" that someday we shall through some unknown and magical means be
able to cause the human heart to beat again.  I also hear of some young and
naive medical students attaching electrical generating machines to the
hearts of primitive creatures, such as frogs, and believing that because
they can create chaotic convulsions in animal tissue that somehow we will be
able to restore normal heart function after coronary morbidity in some
impossible future.

Nonsense!  What would these young fools have us believe?   That we will
attach wires to the human heart and then have the patient attached to a
mechanical machine like a motorcar?  This is the rubbish fantasy of
novelists like Mr. Wells or Mssr. Verne.

(Uneasy laughter ripples through the hall).

I have here a list of patients I have personally signed the death
certificates for in the last forty years of my active professional life as
both surgeon and medical instructor in this fine hospital and esteemed
medical college.   Here are the simple, unpleasant but accurate medical
details if you would care to read them.  In not one case when heart failure
occured did even ONE of these patients return to life.  The most obvious
common sense would make this plain.

(The professor rivets his gaze upon one young student who shifts
uncomfortably in his chair).

Read the details for yourself.  I was there.  I personally attended to these
patients with the care and affection normal to any competent physician.
These patients were dead.  There was nothing now nor in the future that
could have been done to prevent that once their hearts stopped beating.

Heart failure is death.  Understand this fact of life and work to do that
which we CAN do to help our patients as competent physicians.

I also wish to be clear to each of my students here that I will not tolerate
the continuation of the pursuit of these fantasies within this institution.
Further so-called "research" into heart "resuscitation" and other such
delusions will be met with a swift dismissal from the company of this
college.

Now I wish to address the surgical method of the lobotomy in the beneficial
treatment of nervous disease.

(The lecture hall fades back into the past).

------------

Folks, you can't know what will become possible in the future.  Today's
"hopeless" case may come through cryonics just fine and laugh in your face!
Trying to pretend we know what is "beyond hope" NOW is an exercise in
stupidity.

Yes, I said stupidity.  The same stupidity of my fictitious medical
professor above.

The simple fact of the matter beyond our "modern" prejudices and ignorance
is:

NO ONE CAN KNOW WHAT WILL BE POSSIBLE IN THE FUTURE.

Beyond that is the other simple fact.

BUT YOU CAN TRY TO SURVIVE NOW.

Cryonics offers a chance for survival that is otherwise NOT available.

Just my opinion based on what we DO know,
which ALWAYS causes me to feel more optimistic,
which, in turn, as a personal CHOICE in assessing reality
has been proven to strengthen the immune system and thereby
my personal chances for SURVIVAL.

The short version?

Pessimism shortens your life expectancy.

It's also groundless.

"It's always too soon to despair." - Robert Ettinger

George Smith
CI member and Immortalist
... and veteran of three years of daily autopsy experience in NATO.

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