X-Message-Number: 2125 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: cryonics: #2099-#2102 Date: Thu, 15 Apr 93 22:06:29 PDT Re Ralph Merkle's message: Evolutionists have done a great deal of work on the evolution of aging ever since the first 1956 paper by GC Williams (I've cited its source often in CRYONICS and elsewhere). Williams, incidentally, is a very acute thinker on the subject of evolution in general, but doesn't have the publicity section that some others do. In its broad outlines the NATURE article basically says what I've been saying on that question: aging happens because there's no reason to preserve some mutation which only benefits creatures who don't live long enough to get its benefits. (Yes, there are subtle variations on that theme, which the recent NATURE article discusses). Why is that important? Because it tells us, first, that there is no case that we will ultimately destroy ourselves if we increase our longevity, and second that the conditions for human beings living a much longer time already exist. Mice, for instance, only live for about 3 months in the wild; in a lab, they can live 10 times that. And it's only in the lab that they can grow old--- rather like human beings, who have only recently started to develop large numbers of old people. Incidentally, evolution doesn't just work on creatures with our special biochemistry. Dawkins has been looking at the conditions required; but we cannot escape evolution JUST by making ourselves of silicon or diamond. We'd have to change other things too. About the frozen baby: Stories like this seem to constantly pop up. What they really show is not that human beings have much more ability to withstand cold (in the right conditions) than anyone previously thought, but that nearly every reader of the newspapers or magazines where these stories appear has no idea at all about the effects of cold. Even First Aid courses now point out that the period without respiration or heartbeat can be lengthened very considerably by low temperaturesbut most people don't seem to have got the idea. long life to all, Thomas -- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2125