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From att!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Eric_S_Klien Thu Nov 22 23:55:14 1990
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From: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Eric_S_Klien
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Subject: Alcor Boston
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 90 20:37:53 PST
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ALCOR BOSTON
PRESENTS
MANNED SPACE EXPLORATION AND CRYONICS: TWO RELATED FIELDS
Are you skeptical about being able to explore/vacation in outer space
in your lifetime? Then why not increase your chances that you will
be alive when manned space travel finally becomes economically
feasible? Cryonics is a life extention option that may keep you
alive as we wait a century or two for technology to accomplish what
we can only dream of today.
We will be discussing:
1) What will be more important to our society: manned space
exploration or manned space vacations?
2) Would exploring other galaxies be fun or does our local galaxy
contain all the exciting sites that you could ever see?
3) What would you do to kill time on a long space trip?
4) Will space travel be an option to all citizens in the future?
5) Would space travel still be interesting if you could just fake it
using a virtual reality simulator?
6) Will our population problem be solved by space travel?
7) Is enough money currently being spent on manned space research?
8) Would the speed of light greatly hinder manned space flight?
9) What other entertainment options will exist in the future besides
space flight?
10) Will people devote themselves mostly to entertainment in the
future?
We will be meeting on Sunday December 9th, 1990 at 3:00 PM at the
home of Peter Hurst, 1850 Commonwealth Ave., Brighton, MA 02135. If
you get lost, call him at (617) 277-2003. If you have questions
about meeting contact call Eric Klien at (508) 663-5480 Work or (508)
250-0820 Home. If you can't attend but would like to be on the Alcor
Boston mailing list, send a postcard to Eric Klien, 1 Sinai Circle
B10, Chelmsford, MA 01824.
Note that positions taken by our local discussion group may not be
shared by Alcor.
ALCOR BOSTON MINUTES
Sunday November 11th 3:00 - 8:20 PM
Announcement
------------
Note that Alcor does not endorse any of the positions that our
discussion group may take. For example, they do not have a position
against any religions, nor do they support term life insurance, nor
do they support rock and roll over classical music.
Meeting Dates
-------------
Our next meetings will be on Dec 9, Jan 13, Feb 10, Mar 10, and April
14th at 3:00 PM. Location of the meetings will be at the home of
Peter Hurst, 1850 Commonwealth Ave, Brighton, MA 02135 until further
notice.
Member Recruitment
------------------
We had a smaller group as we moved toward the holiday season. Ideas
about how we could increase our membership were discussed. Writing
to The Planetary Society, StarLog, the Hemlock Society, the Foresight
Institute, the Right to Die Foundation, Omni, and Longevity and
asking for Massachussetts mailing lists was suggested. Having
letters to the editor published in these magazines was also
discussed. I am in in the process of implementing these suggestions.
Contacting local groups was also suggested, considering the success
of our MIT nanotech contact. I would like to stress that if anyone
knows of any local groups that may be interested in cryonics, PLEASE
contact them and ask if they will either accept a speaker or a mass
mailing.
Dave Greenstein said he would look into having our group sponser a
meeting at MIT during the winter break.
Resistance to Life
------------------
It was mentioned that for most people life is like a bad movie. They
aren't unhappy enough to leave the theater, but they wouldn't pay to
see the movie again either. It is this attitude that makes the
selling of additional years of life so difficult. Talking about
movies, I would recommend the movie Ghost, I got a big kick of seeing
how the world would be if ghosts really existed. (Crime would
dramatically drop although there would be a lot of unexplained broken
windows and lots of flying objects.)
It was also mentioned that most people just think short term, so they
are unable to realize that even if they are unhappy now, future
technology could make their lives enjoyable.
Aging Research
--------------
It was mentioned that almost no money is spent for aging research. I
am happy to report that according to the November 2, 1990 issue of
Science, $325 million in government funding and $1.8 billion in
private funding is being spent on aging research this year. The
government spending represents an increase in funding of 36% over
last year, more than twice as much an increase as any other institute
at NIH.
Future Entertainment
--------------------
The idea of living in virtual realities was discussed. For example,
you could pretend to go back in time and explore ancient societies.
You could even try alternate histories, such as being a leader and
making different decisions. By the way, there is a game called
Battletech that should be housed in Boston within the next 12 months.
This is a virtual reality game where you pretend to be a huge 30 foot
robot in a desert environment playing in a four man team against
other players. This game took ten years of programming to make and
is supposed to be a lot of fun. This is the first virtual reality
game ever marketed. It does cost $7.00/10 minutes though due to
heavy hardware costs.
Skeptical Inquirers of New England
----------------------------------
I passed out flyers at the October 31, 1990 meeting of the Skeptical
Inquirers. They asked a few questions and seemed fairly interested
but since only six people attended their meeting, the odds are
against us getting new members from this meeting. But it was worth a
shot.
Alcor News
----------
The state of California has finally ruled that cryonics is legal.
Considering that Alcor has been practicing cryonics for 18 years,
this was not a moment too soon. The State of California had been
refusing to issue death certificates for Alcor members for the past 2
years in a legal dispute. They said that since there was no box on
death certificates for cryonics that cryonics must be illegal. The
Los Angeles Superior Court said they were wrong.
Right to Die
------------
It was mentioned that a father killed his son with a court order
saying that anyone who helped kill his son is not guilty of a crime.
The son was a quadriplegic and the father was terminally ill. The
father disconnected his son's respirator at his son's request. It
looks more and more like assisted suicide will soon be legal. Next
year, there will be a voter initiative to make this legal in
Washington which would be a huge plus for terminally ill Alcor
members.
Why Cryonics Can Work
---------------------
This Alcor pamphlet was passed around. It includes a picture of
rabbit brain frozen to -60 celsius with intact cells and good cell-
to-cell connections. It also mentioned that dogs have survived 4 1/2
hours at 4 celsius. Finally, it said that Alcor will soon
participate in a research program to demonstrate memory retention in
the brain after both freezing and vitrification at -196 celsius.
Vitrification is freezing a biological system without the formation
of ice crystals. This research program will be done in conjunction
with Cryovita Laboratories. The eventual goal is to achieve full-
fledged suspended animation by the year 2000. As usual donations for
this animation program can be sent to The Alcor Foundation, 12327
Doherty Street, Riverside, CA 92503. Or you can call them 24 hours a
day at 1-800-367-2228.
Alcor has begin to develop a technical book entitled "The Scientific
Evidence That Cryonics Can Work" that will fully document all the
available evidence in favor of cryonics.
Thomas Donaldson Case
---------------------
If you wish to contribute to the Thomas Donaldson legal fight, send
money to the Thomas Donaldson Legal Defense Fund (attention Arel
Lucas), 1794 Cardel Way, San Jose, CA 95124. Or call Arel Lucas at
1-408-978-7616. Thomas is fighting to be frozen before his brain
becomes scientifically dead. (Which would happen months before he
became legally dead.) Thomas has lost his first round in the courts
and needs our help!
Rights of the Dead
------------------
A Louisiana coroner is being sued for 2 million dollars because he
intentionally dropped the body of a 4-month-old baby on its head.
This probably means nothing, but it was worth noting.
Living and Dying and Living Again
---------------------------------
We discussed this article from the November 1990 issue of Longevity.
This paper talked about how resuscitation medicine is reviving the
"temporarily dead" and suggested that dramatically lowering the body
temperatures of seriously injured people could be good medicine. It
also mentioned that various chemicals have proven to dramatically
reduce brain damage caused by no blood flow. I quote the final
paragraph:
"But the most dramatic area of investigation remains the audacious
battle against the "disease" called death. The five-minute limit is
now fading away, and 15, 20, or, under special circumstances, 60 or
90 minutes is being talked about as the limit for restoring life to a
patient. If resuscitation can even occur at the 20-minute threshold
-- undreamed of a decade ago, now considered possible in the next ten
years -- it should provide enough time to get many people who die
suddenly to a treatment center. There, emergency room doctors armed
with bypass machines, hypothermia and chemical cocktails might be
able to maintain the person, safely dead, for an hour to an hour and
a half -- long enough to bring him back to tell his story."
Taking Your Money With You
--------------------------
I showed a brochure from The Reanimation Foundation. This
Liechtenstein foundation allows you to put aside money for use in
both your reanimation and for funding to enjoy your life after you
are restored to a life. Their local address is The Reanimation
Foundation, 16280 Whispering Spur, Riverside, CA 92504.
Video
-----
The recent cryonics segment on 48 hours was shown.
Questions
---------
If any e-mail people reading these minutes have questions that they
would like answered in future meetings, send me the questions and
they will be answered in the next minutes published.
Reprinting
----------
If Alcor would like to reprint this newsletter in full or in part in
the next issue of Cryonics, they can feel free to do so. (Without
our names and addresses of course!)
Mistakes
--------
If any of these minutes reflect mistaken information, let Eric Klien
know!
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