X-Message-Number: 23354 Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 13:10:20 -0700 From: Paul Antonik Wakfer <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #23346 - The Essence of Cryonics References: <> > Message #23346 > Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 07:46:53 -0500 > From: Thomas Donaldson <> > Subject: CryoNet #23341 - #23342 I strongly disagree with Thomas' characterization of cryonics given in this message. Most intelligent people and certainly all those knowledgeable in medicine are not blind to the facts of the history of medicine - that there is now possible the full recovery, and return to life from near death of many sick and injured whose recovery from those specific diseases and damage was not possible in the past (or not to the same extent). These same people fully understand that, in similar manner, in the future many people who would be declared dead today will be cured and repaired to live full lives. If this were the major problem of cryonics promotion, then all these people would already have adopted the idea, and by example and persuasion of knowledge, would have led the rest of the population to do likewise. However, the essence of cryonics is not related to death at all! It is instead related to patient transport - in particular to medical time travel - the ability to transport a severely damaged patient to a future time when his damage will be fixable and his death averted. This means that there are two critical stages involved with the *proof* that cryonics works (and thus before it can be widely salable). The first stage of proof for cryonics will occur when it is shown that a fully healthy human (or sufficiently close human surrogate) can be cryopreserved and revived without any life-shortening damage. The second will occur when it is shown that a human with some disease or damage which would currently lead to certain death can be cryopreserved until that disease or damage is curable and then be revived, cured and returned to full life as he was before he became diseased or damaged. These are the ultimate milestones which must be achieved before cryonics will be recognized as a fully rational medical option. Thus, as medical time travel cryonics *can* be proven to work. Proven cryonics will give us medical transport into the future (without a bumpy ambulance ride which causes additional damage) which we do not have now. The only continuing element of non-proof will involve its perfection for the most severely damaged cases. With respect to the current necessity to begin after declaration of death, cryonicists should continue to demand the right to begin transport of a terminal patient *before* legal death is declared. Cryonicists should never be *wanting* to cryopreserve those already declared dead, but should only be willing to accept this if they can do no better. They accept it only because they (and all intelligent medical people) know that such patients are usually still recoverable when death is currently declared. It is true that in the most extreme cases of patient damage, where the myopia of many medical professionals prevents them from being able to imagine that such people can *ever* be fixed, cryonicists must also argue against the abandoning of such patients. However, I think it is very important to completely separate the promotion of the possibilities of future medicine from the promotion of suspended animation. The reason why such a separation is important is because there are many potential applications for whole body suspended animation and for reversible cryopreservation of biological tissues which do not involve severely damaged terminal patients or those already declared dead. Once suspended animation is perfected, the procedures will generally be able to start *before* death! The starting after declaration of death will then be only in those special cases when the patient could not be reached before cessation of heartbeat, respiration and brain function. In fact, in the latter situation it would be wrong to call the procedure "suspended animation" since "animation" was already involuntarily terminated - ie. the full life attributes of a human are absent from such a person. In such a case cryonicists should not shirk from the language of cryopreservation of "human remains" because even a full body of tissue which cannot be currently restored to life clearly does not have all the essential characteristics of being human. It is only because the goal of cryonics is the initiation of a medical procedure on living humans that cryonicists do not like to use the "human remains" terminology, even though in practice the cryopreservation of human remains is currently what is actually done. It is folly to think that the notion of death should or can be completely eliminated since not only will there always be situations where no human remains are every found, but there will also always be situations which are so devastating that restoration to life is truly impossible (this is so in spite of Mike Perry's and other's belief to the contrary). It is only *after* medical time travel is perfected that the current uses of death terminology will have any possibility to be greatly reduced, since only then will it often be possible to transport most dying and/or "life impaired" patients far enough into the future that they will be repairable and restorable to full life. --Paul Wakfer MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality The Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org Rational freedom by self-sovereignty & social contracting Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23354