X-Message-Number: 19607 Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 07:43:57 -0700 Subject: Editorial Response From: Peter Merel <> Being San Diego based, I felt obligated to respond to the union-tribune editorial, and I include the text of that letter here. I also stumbled across a page that provides hundreds of email to editor gateways - http://www.globalfreepress.com/media_blast.pl - and am trying to come up with something generic enough to use with that. A few years ago Electronic Frontiers Australia used a similar list of email-to-fax gateways to good effect in opposing net censorship legislation. When the hypnocracy broadcast editorials, we shouldn't feel squeamish about broadcasting responses ... ---- When I was a boy, Dr Christian Barnard performed the world's first heart transplant. My local newspaper declared this "an abomination". It invoked holy writ, and questioned whether the transplant recipient still had a soul. It said Barnard was a monster, and his patient a dupe. It said the whole business was an offense against God, Nature, and Humanity. Your July 17 editorial treats cryonics the same way. Of course we're shocked by the Williams case. The whole idea is very strange to us. But let's give this strange idea the same open minded consideration we eventually gave Barnard's transplants. Let's ask ourselves a simple question. Could this actually work? Obviously we don't have the technology to revive frozen people. Cryonics needs nanotechnology to do that, billions of molecular robots programmed to fix the frostbite cell by cell. Along with whatever killed you in the first place. We don't have those robots. Will we ever? For that we need to consult Moore's law - the exponential decrease in component sizes. Nanotech components will be ready this decade. It'll take longer to figure out control systems for them - but there's no science to say that's harder than, say, developing a modern computer operating system. We'll need nanotech systems to keep up with world population growth anyway. And while they develop, the frozen folks at Alcor will keep. Okay, so cryonics might actually work out. Still, who would want such a thing? Well, who would want a heart transplant? If it works, it's the same business - it's a way to save lives. Freezing costs what a good heart transplant costs. Via an insurance policy that's the price of a pizza a week. Aren't the lives of our parents and grandparents worth this much? The idea that the Splendid Splinter might get another turn at bat is shocking. But if it happens, we'll get over it the same as we got over heart transplants, because they save the lives of people we love. Trying to save lives isn't stupidity. It's courage. ---- Peter Merel. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19607