X-Message-Number: 3664 Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 22:01:53 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS:Pseudoscience Today I received a call on the CryoCare 800 number from a woman who was surprised--maybe even a little shocked--that I had no knowledge of, or interest in, morphic fields and the use of radio waves to accelerate wound healing. She went on at some length on these subjects, and claimed that she herself had induced tissue regeneration via radio waves. "I'm sorry," I said finally, "I'm really not very interested in this kind of fringe science." "Fringe science!" She laughed loudly. "What do you think cryonics is?" And this is exactly the problem. We are still thought of as being on the fringes of science, or being downright pseudoscience, and we will not make much progress until this perception can be revised. This means, please note, that all cryonicists will continue to suffer a greater risk of permanent death (as a result of poor treatment by unsympathetic doctors, courts, law enforcement, local officials, etc.) so long as cryonics is stigmatized. Therefore, for those of us who are signed up, our lives may depend on de-stigmatizing cryonics. Yvan Bozzonetti has received a nice letter from "Daedelus." I'm happy for him. For those who aren't familiar with "Daedelus," he writes a playful column full of wry humor, and everyone understands that Daedelus is a professional journalist, NOT a professional scientist, and his column IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. By contrast, the original purpose of CryoNet, as I understand it, was to present cryonics to the net-reading public in a basically serious context. This is one of only four or five "showcases" for cryonics (the other showcases being magazines put out by cryonics organizations, and the cryonics news group on Usenet). In no other forums can we feel that there is any guarantee of cryonics being presented fairly and seriously. It occurs to me that Y.B. may not realize this. To him, cryonics may be one big joke; the same kind of stuff that he reads about in Daedelus. As a result, he is confused that we don't all slap him on the back and enjoy a good laugh about his experiments in "pseudoscience" (which is the term he has used himself in his most recent post). The fact is, Y.B., many people here--probably the majority--do take cryonics seriously, and we feel we have excellent reasons for doing so. Take a look at the level of scientific discussion in (for instance) the fact book from Alcor, or the shorter booklet from CryoCare, and you will see that there is not a trace of pseudoscience. We do not have the luxury to indulge in Daedelus-style pseudoscience jokes, because our scientific legitimacy is precarious at best, and we don't want to encourage people to take it any less seriously than they do already. To some extent, our future lives depend on this. Sorry not to share the joke, but perhaps now you see why. ############################################################ Charles Platt, 1133 Broadway (room 1214), New York, NY 10010 Voice: 212 929 3983 Fax: 212 929 4467 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3664