X-Message-Number: 25091
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 12:50:21 -0800
Subject: Balance (to John)
From: <>

Dear John:

You wrote:

"The difficulty here is that if cryonics gets to be point of being 
perceived as a cult which requires its adherents to give up 
everything and live and work wherever the cult is, it will be 
closed down."

I don't think it's necessary to go to those extremes, but we can at 
least establish some guidelines:

1. If you live alone, then you should be relatively young and in 
good health, and have at least told your family and friends about 
cryonics.
 
2. If you aren't young or in good health, then in addition to (1), 
you need to live with at least one other person who is available 
most of the time, have a medical alert system, and have discussed 
with your doctors what they should do in the event of an emergency.

3. If you are in poor health, and especially if you are at high 
risk of death due to heart attack, stroke, or organ failure, then 
in addition to both (1) and (2), you should relocate to the 
cryonics organization of your choosing, and have a alert system in 
place.

4. If you are near death, then in addition to (1) - (3), you need 
to have a standby team available 24x7, with all arrangements made 
for declaration of legal death.

If people followed these (non-extreme) measures, they would 
significantly increase their chance of a good preservation. But as 
it is, we have obese, overweight individuals who have had multiple 
heart attacks living alone far from their cryonics organizations 
and who have family members hostile to cryonics, very few if any 
friends, and no alert system. People need to be smarter than this.

Cryonics is not a religion. You can't just say words (or sign a few 
documents) and be assured of success. 

[snip]

You wrote:

"I certainly think that trying to inject fear into people to make 
them 'take steps' is not a good idea for the long term benefit of 
the movement. Those that become aware of technical issues can work 
out for themselves where they want the balance to be. It will be 
different for every individual."

If we care about them, shouldn't we make them aware of the 
technical issues? We don't have to tell them what to do, just to 
realistically inform them of the consequences of delaying 
suspension after death.

Best Regards,

Richard B. R.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25091

Warning: This message was filtered from the daily CryoNet digest
because the poster sent too many messages per digest.
It thus may need to be rated.