X-Message-Number: 3553
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 1994 11:06:41 -0500
From: 
Subject: CRYONICS marketing

David Stodolsky suggests that, since cryonics organizations offer services
useful to dying people, we should market cryonics to dying people, namely
AIDS patients (for which he suggests other benefits also).

Actually, only around 1% of the dying people in the U.S. have AIDS, according
to 1993 statistics. More than half of all deaths are due to cardiovascular
disease (including stroke), with cancer a distant second at around 17%.

Of course, that is statistical baloney.  The majority of deaths are the
result of senescence, although senescence is never listed on the death
certificate. That aside, the question is, who are our best prospects among
people who are reasonably sure of a short life expectancy?

Perhaps the best way to answer is to look at the actual figures for cryonics
patients. Most of them (at least among Cryonics Institute patients, and I
think elsewhere also) died of cancer or primarily of old age.  

But does this information help us much? We can't chase ambulances, and when
life expectancy is extremely short it is usually too late for a considered
decision by the patient--although quite often a dying patient may recall an
earlier tentative mental memo to look into it or even to do it, or someone in
the family may.

In practice, it seems to me, about all we can do is keep trying to raise
public consciousness; and in the case of Cryonics Institute to make sure our
affordable price is known ($28,000 minimum, whole body).  

Every sizable city's Yellow Pages should have a Cryonics listing.  Maybe the
organizations should combine funding for this, with a central listing, each
inquirer to be given the numbers of all the organizations.

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