X-Message-Number: 26567
Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2005 23:31:24 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Reply to David Pizer
References: <>

MIKE SAID BEFORE: No, Dave. It is *not* always true. Suppose your mother 
will have dinner, but you want to have a glass of orange juice first. You 
know there isn't any juice at home, so you stop by a grocery store and buy 
a carton. You will still get the meal in any case. But you get an added 
benefit that is actually independent of whether the meal is waiting or not.

DAVID SAID:  This example is so far off track I don't know how to reply. 
What has buying orange juice got to do with a dinner?

MIKE: Not a lot (maybe). The point I am making is that the two are *not* 
the same. The dinner = "eternal life". The juice = "cryonics arrangements". 
But "dinner" (eternal life) is not the only reason someone would choose 
cryonics. They could see cryonics as something desirable and worth having 
(an "appetizer" if you will) but still not the "main course."

MIKE SAID BEFORE:  That is the way cryonics can be too, and it's the same 
with ordinary medicine. A Christian cancer patient, you might think, would 
not opt for any treatment because if that worked it would only delay his 
entry into Heaven, yet I think you find such people will very often choose 
the medical treatment in hopes it will extend their earthly life.

DAVID:  Usually only when the treatment is not as unusual as cryonics.  Or, 
if the doc says there is a pretty good chance the treatment will 
work.  And, if the patients thinks it is pretty ordinary.

But remember this?   When organ transplants, blood transfusions, etc first 
came out, when they were new as cryonics is now, many religious persons did 
not opt for them because they thought this was a very long shot and coupled 
that with the thought they were guaranteed a place in Heaven anyway.

MIKE: All right, granted we have something of an uphill fight to convince 
people that cryonics is a reasonable thing to do. We don't expect to win 
over a great many people immediately, given its unusual nature and much 
greater cost compared to conventional burial or cremation. *And* given it 
hasn't worked so far (nobody has been resuscitated, nor any warm-blooded 
animal, not even a small mouse, or even a vertebrate, assuming we are 
talking about full cryogenic storage). Still, we can work on that angle--to 
present cryonics as a type of medical treatment, not a challenge to one's 
basic certainties about things, and I think our results will be lower-risk 
and pay off better. Another thought is that we could work toward low-cost 
cryonics alternatives that would not be more expensive than more 
conventional arrangements. I think many (not necessarily religious but some 
of them too) might opt for this approach and furthering it would not pose 
the risk that your lawsuit would.

Another thought: echoing Kennita Watson, healthy, financially solvent 
atheists ought to be willing to sign up for cryonics. (This should include 
people like computer programmers who are science- and information-oriented, 
and would easily understand the basic cryonics rationale.) They can afford 
it, and they have no religious expectation of an afterlife. Yet by and 
large they haven't signed up. Yes, I will grant that the majority of 
cryonicists are atheists or not strongly religious. But the majority of 
atheists by far, the ones who could afford cryonics, still are not 
cryonicists. This I think weighs against your theory that the main 
deterrent to signups is religious belief, or more correctly, too strong a 
religious belief in an afterlife. Instead I think, for atheists, that it's 
a combination of their already having accepted death, with all that 
implies, and their perception that cryonics is just too long a shot. So 
they aren't persuaded even if you present them with the ideas that it is 
their *only hope* for a life beyond the usual limits, and that they have 
basically nothing to lose by trying. Your proposed suit would presumably be 
aimed at creating people like them (at least religiously skeptical to some 
degree) from the ranks of the formerly "true believers." From these, 
though, I think you still would not get many signups--without scientific 
breakthroughs. If you did get a few more signups (and I think you could 
well get fewer not more, by the way you would alienate so many) you'd have 
to weigh this against the threat to the movement that I think your action 
would provoke.

DAVID: I don't think your example  is true on very unusual options like 
cryonics. And, I believe that in a hundred years, the belief in a guarantee 
of Heaven (if it still exists) will not preclude people from opting for a 
more developed technology of cryonics -- but what about all the people that 
might have to be dead forever in the meantime??  Do you care about 
them?  If you do, don't you want to try to do something to help them?

MIKE: I do care about the people of the world today who are going to their 
deaths, and I would like to see them all signed up for cryonics. But I 
don't think exactly like you, in that I think cryonics can be justified 
independently of whether it is necessary for eternal life, *and* people of 
today can understand and accept this, including religious people, *and* you 
don't have to challenge their belief in alternatives or ultimate fate or 
whether death is truly eternal. You propose a frontal assault on something 
very important to religious people, the *certainty and confidence* they 
feel about their beliefs, and this I think would be a bigger affront than 
you realize.

Remember that the Bible says they are to believe "with all their heart" and 
not just have hopes or, I would say, even just believe. It is not just 
*that* they believe or *what* they believe but *how* they believe that is 
important, as one of them once emphasized to me. I think this called-for 
state of belief goes beyond mere certainty, to an attitude of loving 
approval and commitment. I can say I believe with certainty that two is 
greater than one, but it does not carry the emotional weight of "with all 
my heart." And a preacher I remember once said, in effect, that the devil 
believes with certainty, but not exactly with all his heart. But certitude, 
though not sufficient, is necessary for belief with all the heart. Not 
challenging this heart-felt, loving certainty, but instead accepting these 
people for what they are, and working *with* them and encouraging them with 
the possibilities cryonics can offer, would be a far better approach in my 
view than this litigation you propose, and would save more lives in the end.

To return now to the possibility of a low-cost alternative to cryonics: I 
have looked into it, and consulted with a mortician in my area. It appears 
that a brain could be chemopreserved using formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, or 
a combination of the two, in a protocol that morticians could apply fairly 
easily and inexpensively. (And they are flexible about the protocols that 
would be used, within reasonable limits.) Brains preserved this way could 
then be stored, again inexpensively, for long periods at 40 degrees F, at 
an underground storage center. The cost overall (for 100 years' storage) 
would be in the range of burial and cremation, and far cheaper than cryonic 
suspension. (Another possibility might be a permafrost or cold-climate 
burial, say when enough brains had accumulated, which would then be 
maintenance-free.) In my view that would be much better than nothing, 
though certainly not up to cryonics standards. I would be very interested 
in contributing to such an effort. Yet I have to say I would not be too 
surprised if you didn't have too many takers. It would be seen as too long 
a shot, like cryonics itself, only worse. Still, I think it would be worth 
a try, and a few might opt for it who would otherwise be buried or cremated.

I also have a burning question about the suit: who would be named as the 
defendants?

Mike Perry

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26567