X-Message-Number: 53
From: Kevin Q. Brown
Subject: Why Aging Research Needs Cryonics
Date: 18 Jan 1989

The Dec. 1988 issue of Life Extension Report included an editorial by
Thomas Donaldson titled "Why Aging Research Needs Cryonics."  He pointed out
a simple reason why billions of dollars per year go toward cancer and heart
disease whereas only a few million go to aging research and even less goes to
preventive medicine:
  "Neither preventive medicine, nor aging research, will make us well
  when we are sick."
People sick with cancer, heart disease, atherosclerosis, etc. want cures for
their particular diseases and form strong pressure groups for research and
treatments for those particular diseases.  Research into the main problem,

aging, from which those particular diseases arise, is too abstract and long-term
for people now facing death from a particular disease, and therefore aging
research loses out in the competition for funding.  Similarly, nobody dies

directly from lack of preventive medicine, and it, too, receives little support.
Donaldson suggests that this situation will change when cryonic suspension is
widely seen as a better gamble than throwing as much money as possible at each
particular disease.  At that point, the urgency and desperation associated with
cancer, heart disease, etc. will abate sufficiently for funding to shift toward
research on aging itself (and, of course, revival from cryonic suspension).

                                       - Kevin Q. Brown
                                       ...{att|clyde|cuae2}!ho4cad!kqb
                                       

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