X-Message-Number: 3045
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS: about research
Date: Thu, 1 Sep 1994 18:19:27 -0700 (PDT)


About research:

1. If I understand the situation, we don't yet HAVE 500 hard-core cryonicists,
   though it's reasonable to expect that we will someday.

   In my own perhaps biased opinion, it should be possible to START work on
   brain preservation with the means we have now. And even if that takes much
   longer than 5 years, it will very likely improve our present methods and
   give some serious substance to the claim that we aren't just people who
   sit around and hope for revival.

   If it makes any difference, I have founded an organization to publish
   a journal of papers on exactly the subject of neuropreservation:
   the proposed name of the journal if NEUROCRYOBIOLOGY and the organization
   is the Institute for Neural Cryobiology. Given the resources at hand,
   we presently have no plans more grandiose than to publish the papers
   written by cryonicists. I've got several in hand now (most put together
   by Mike Darwin and Steve Harris). The effort itself was instigated by
   Mike, who needed a place to publish such things ... which is not to say
   that it is only for Mike. The Institute is a fully qualiied charitable
   society, incorporated and all that. 

   Furthermore, it's very unlikely that scientists will clamor for our first
   issue. 

   I think the only thing we can do now is to start small. That way, we will
   get `SOMETHING done. Waiting until X number of hard core cryonicists
   donate the money required according to Y's estimate essentially means 
   doing nothing.

2. Unfortunately, it is NOT true that any government is spending large amounts
   of money, even on kidney cryopreservation. And as many cryonicists know,
   a large number of influential cryobiologists are actually AGAINST cryonics,
   and have expressed their opinion in the Bylaws of the Society for Cryo-
   biology. This opinion is NOT based on any special knowledge, but on the 
   same kinds of problems quite ordinary people have with cryonics: emotional,
   theological, etc. Not scientific.


   If anything, this makes it even more important for us to get to work, even if
   what we can do will be only small.

I hope to get some kind of serious discussion going at the upcoming Cryonics
Conference. I will say, though, that on this issue the kind of fissiparous
behavior which cryonics societies have shown is totally self-defeating and
absurd. Even if we had 500 hard-core cryonicists, just where would we be if
they split into 3 groups each of which refused to talk to one another?

			Long long life,

			   Thomas Donaldson

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