X-Message-Number: 5150
Date: 10 Nov 95 05:37:16 EST
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: This and that...

Richard Schroeppel's post about hyperbaria gave me good long laugh.  No, 
this not ad hominem and Richard's post was fine.  It was just one line in 
it, one word really.  I was thinking about the likely effects of the 
various maneuvers involving 2000 atmosphers, etc., and then I read:

>Is there a more reasonable pressure/temperature curve that will vitrify 
the *victim*?

Was I the only one who found this choice of word blackly appropriate :)?

I then went on to read Thomas Donaldson's piece.  I liked it very much 
overall, but was really pissed and puzzled by the following statement in 
it:

>At the same time, little seems to be going on
>(except possibly in Mike Darwin's lab, but he might well not let other 
>cryonics groups use it...

Thomas, where do get this crap from?  You are a smart man.  I have known 
you for years and you have known me (I thought!).  Nothing in my past or my 
present would warrant such a statement.  Almost all of the advances I have 
participated in were freely available and I have privately communiated 
information obtained at great cost to us at 21st to cryonics groups when we 
have uncovered serious problems involving patient care.

Yes, I am in a most unpleasant situation right now with respect to patents 
on certain very (in my opinion) important technology of great utility to 
cryonics.  But this does not mean I will not make it unavailable to other 
cryonics groups.  This is nonsense.  Ask Jim Yount about my 
forthcomingness.

As to technology we develop, I feel it likely that it will be available to 
any one who wants to pay the licensing fee and handle it responsibly.  
Indeed, if anyone wants to apply existing patented technology a la Fahy to 
humans, or elements of it which we control for cryonics applications, all 
they have to do is open negotiations.  No one will be treated unfairly.  

My objective is to make money, and make it responsibly.  One does not make 
money by turning customers away.  I have no desire for BPI to "capture the 
cryonics market".  In fact, I hope sincerely to keep BPI relatively small 
and I have a take it as it comes philosophy.  Cryonics as it is currently 
practiced is subjectively to me horrible, an ordeal.  I just spent hours 
trying to talk a pain wracked and dying client out of the depths of fear 
and depression; much of it precipitated by despicable medical care (I WILL 
have more to say on this subject in the future!).

Thomas, your remarks were inflammatory and unfounded.  I suspect they are 
motivated by your frustration that I do not have time to prepare a formal 
article on the survey brain work we have done.  Nevertheless, the DATA is 
out there; the paper was posted to Cryonet and the pictures are available 
upon request and copying charges, and some (representative ones to boot) 
have been published in CC report.  If you can find someone who wahts to 
graph the data, and do the large load of administrative work required to 
prepare this work for formal publication, I will gratefully accept the help 
and turn over copies of the data.

Finally, we are still getting data back on this series, and still have at 
least one more dog to do and a raft of 7.4M freeze-substitution studies.

David Stodolsky asks:

>Can somebody supply a definition (including a citation
>of a source)? I am not looking for a example definition,
>such as, "the system used in country X", but one based upon other
>theoretically valid terms, such as "property", "market economy", etc.

I am sure others can cite Rand and others with good tight definitions. 
Keith Lynch should be at the ready and able.

Here I would simply like to say that the use of the word "property" by 
David (as I understand it) is an oxymoron.  Before you can define 
collectivism you first have to define property.  My definition of property 
is a person's life and all nonprocreative derivatives of that life that are 
obtained without the use of force or fraud.

Collectivism?  Why not let Marx define it's core tenet:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." 

I would add: "Whether you like it or not, whether we have to threaten you, 
shoot you, or torture you."  


Mike Darwin


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