X-Message-Number: 21219
From: 
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 21:20:56 EST
Subject: An investigation of Alcor can be very good for cryonics.

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An investigation of Alcor can be very good for Cryonics.
By:  David Pizer

With the recent new flurry of more publicity on the Ted Williams affair, 
there seems to be some people who are calling for an investigation of Alcor.  
This can be very good for Alcor.

There are, at least, three possible outcomes in the upcoming publicity.  
1.     The reporters can try to put a positive spin on cryonics.
2.    The reporters can try to put a negative spin on cryonics.
3.    The reporters can try to do an objective story.

We cryonicists worry about the middle option.  But even in the past when some 
reporters tried to put a negative spin on a cryonics story, we always made 
the best of it with the readers that count.

By that I mean when a reporter puts a negative spin on a cryonics story the 
readers who are against cryonics may be titillated but they would not have 
become cryonics supports anyhow.

The people who support cryonics can see through the spin and it rallies our 
supporters to become even stronger.

The real area of benefit to us is in the area of the neutral readers.  Most 
of the neutral readers are of high intelligence.  They can easily see where 
the hot air is in a negative-spin story and the whole exercise makes them 
more sympathetic to our cause.  

As an example, I remember in the Dora Kent affair when some reporters tried 
to put the negative spin.  Alcor was able to get it's story out to those who 
counted and because of the good job Alcor did, our membership and donations 
had an unusual leap.  I even remember getting donations from people who would 
say something like:  "I'm not even interested in cryonics for myself, but I 
admire Alcor's honesty and dedication and here is a donation for X dollars - 
keep up the good work!"

I see great opportunity for the cryonics movement to get its message out 
during the potential upcoming re-interest in the Ted Williams affair, as long 
as we stand up for our convictions.  We are the conservative humans - history 
we show that we held the moral high ground.

Lastly, I believe at this time there is one major point we need to stress 
over and over in our messages if we are going to use this to our advantage, 
that message is:
"In many cases, when a person is declared legally dead, most of his/her body 
is biologically alive.  This is proven every day when biologically live 
organs are harvested from legally dead people and transplanted to go on to 
survive."


David  Pizer

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