X-Message-Number: 30046
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:18:48 -0500
From: hrhirsch <>
Subject: Ettinger and death

	Perhaps relevant to the current exchanges on fear of death is the 
fact that Bob Ettinger has much more experience with death than most 
of us. My information about this comes from a chapter in his 
excellent philosophical treatise "Youniverse."
	He served in World War II as a second lieutenant in the infantry. 
There is no job an American can do that is more dangerous. Snipers 
specialize in aiming at the field officers. In one instance my uncle 
described, the few survivors of an infantry company included no one 
above the rank of private first class.
	While under fire one day, Bob was standing up in order to better 
locate the enemy, when a shell landed nearby. The fragments killed 
his radio man and shattered his legs. He recovered only after four 
years and numerous operations in military hospitals.
	In his recent Cryonet posting, he says that he has been near death 
five times and feared it only once. He does not count "ordinary days 
under fire on the battlefield in wartime." Bob is the proof of the 
old saying that the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies 
but once. Nevertheless he wants to come back, and every cryonicist 
should be grateful to him and to the work he has done and for his 
remarkable resistance to the fear of death.

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