X-Message-Number: 24541
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
References: <>
Subject: Re: Oil and Overseas "Deanimation" Situations
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:50:56 +0100

Long time cryonicist John Krug asks

> I'm not ashamed to be among those who believe
> that there's no such thing as a dumb question.
> Is it absolutely impossible for people so
> inclined to have viable organizations and
> facilities where they live now??

That is no dumb question, it is a very important one. In an ideal world,
there'd be as many cryonics centers as there are funeral parlours in our
world. People would pay for cryopreservation as they do funerals -- after
they have deanimated and in precedence to any debts, taxes, duties or
bequests from their estates.

However this is the "dying world" not the ideal world. It is a world where
cryonicists are seen as weird -- rather like the character David Vincent in
the paranoid 1960/70s space opera where he was the only chap who realised
the Earth was being taken over by alien beings from a dying world in another
galaxy. Cryonicists are like that - they see everyone else going about their
daily lives oblivious of a threat that will kill them all. In fact
familiarity makes the threat almost imperceptible.

Therefore all economic activity is based on other matters, and cryonics is a
small infinitesimal part of it. The only way the two major cryonics centres
in the world were funded to the extent of being able to provide credible
services is by bequests from founder members who have since deanimated.
Guess what, this ties in with "people pay for funerals after they have
died".

For the expenditure on a funeral "to work" all that needs to be done is for
a body to be burned or rotted. Everyone grumbles about the costs of that,
but nevertheless "it works" - the objective is achieved.

However with cryonics there is also the possibility (some say certainty)
that it will not work. For cryonics to work, the person has to be reanimated
with ageing and all ills cured, at some unspecified date in the future when
and if this is ever possible. Therefore to get initial members in an area
local to themselves to fund a centre **before** they have died is totally
impractical, therefore no local centres are appearing. Suggestions have been
made about getting people like Mr Gates to help, because if they were to do
it the effect of the expenditure on their day to day living would be
infinitesimal. But they have thousands of similar suggestions from other
"eccentric" organisations, and are just as likely to fund some club to rid
the world of flying crockery from dying galaxies of some sort or other.

Even in meetings of people who are receptive to cryonics, when a few
enthusiasts suggest a frugal life is worthwhile because of the wonderful
opportunity of an indefinite lifespan after reanimation, they are debated
out by the others. They sometimes then leave the group or even leave
cryonics entirely in disillusionment.

I don't have a solution, but I do give this as a reason why there are not as
many cryonics centres as could be expected.

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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