X-Message-Number: 3866 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #3859 - #3860 Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 17:03:07 -0800 (PST) Hi! That's a hard one. Even though Ettinger's book became available then, that wasn't when it was taken up by a major publisher and spread throughout the world. I can't claim to KNOW, but from my conversation with him he felt more that cryonics was inspired by his experiment rather than the other way round ... not that he believed in cryonics himself. (Remember, he's Japanese and won't even normally read magazines and books from the English-speaking world). We did discuss his retiring in Australia. He believed, as many Japanese may even now believe, that Asians aren't welcome there (there was a Japanese mathematician at ANU at the time). I explained why and how that was not true, but nothing ever came of it. I got an "omiyage" (a very minor gift which turned out to be a handkerchief) from him as a remembrance of my visit, and I certainly wasn't thrown out unceremoniously, but he showed no sign of actually believing in the worth of cryonics as a real, concrete act: just one of the consequences of his experiment, for bemusements sake. Long long life, Thomas Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3866