X-Message-Number: 22121
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 10:17:46 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics-related stuff

>
>From: "Randy S" <>
>
>Latest Sports Illustrated article on cryonics is disrespectful of cryonics.
>So what's new?
>
> > > The June 30, 2003 issue of Sports Illustrated has an piece on Alcor by
>Rick Reilly.

Having read it . . . well, this kind of thing may be better than no news at 
all.

*******************

Dear Mr. Fish:

That was a fairly sympathetic interview with John Williams, the story a bit 
less so.  Here are a few thoughts on the cryonics side of the story.  (I 
can't comment on the baseball side since chances are if I was standing at 
the plate I would never hit a ball thrown by a Little League pitcher much 
less a farm team pitcher.)

I have been signed up with Alcor since 1985 (after 5-6 years of reviewing 
Eric Drexler's work on nanotechnology).

 From 1988 to mid 90s, I was a volunteer on Alcor's team that cooled people 
after legal death, replaced much of the water in their tissues with 
cryoprotectives (same chemicals that are used to freeze human embryos) and 
did the controlled freezing to liquid nitrogen.

I wrote the programs that controlled the temperature drop and assisted in a 
dozen field standbys.  In all I have been on the teams that did the cryonic 
suspension of 18 people for Alcor.  After 1991 (when we froze the guy who 
had been doing it) I learned how to put people on cardiac bypass.

http://www.holysmoke.org/kh/kh417.htm

There are half a dozen people I consider good friends in suspension and 
many more are members.

Here are two questions for you.

Do you think that medicine will eventually get good enough that everything 
that now causes death will be treatable?

If medicine does get that good, can you see any reason that treatments 
would not be developed where old people appear and feel young and healthy?

If (as many people do) you think this will happen, then at some point there 
will be a last person to die involuntarily.  How would you feel about being 
that person?  Would you want to be put into suspension if the cure for your 
problem was going to be released next week but you were dying today?  If it 
was going to be available next year?  A decade or two?

Now the best way *by far* is to live till whatever problems you have can be 
treated.  But if you can't, should you be denied access to the treatment?

Please consider this without bringing in bogus issues like 
overpopulation.  Technology at *that* level would generate wealth so vast 
that it opens the door to the solar system and beyond.

Be glad to talk to you about this, either by phone or email.

I now live in Canada (Eastern time zone) for reasons you can find by 
putting my name in Google.

519-770-0646 evenings/weekends
416-529-2789 cell phone

Keith Henson

PS  You might pass this on to Rick Reilly (no email for him).  His recent 
column got all the technical details correct in a funny/morbid way I 
appreciate.

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