X-Message-Number: 5748
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension,uk.legal
From:  (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley)
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 07:15:56 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <> <>

In article <>,
Owen Lewis  <> wrote:
>I see. It would not then be invested to maximise a return to the cryonic 
>'patient'?
>Or do I misunderstand? Is the capital and income to be gradually consumed by
>the costs of management and cryonic preservation? And, being prepared to take 
>a thousand year view, how say you on the effects of monetary inflation over 
>such a period? What happens when the fund no longer retains sufficient value 


The current goals of funds are to pay for suspension and eventual revival.
Some seek funds that also would have money left for the revived person,
that's currently not possible in most jurisdictions.

Suspension is fortunately very inexpensive, and will be as long as there
is demand for liquid oxygen, since liquid nitrogen is a cheap byproduct
of that process, and has a market of its own as well.  Frankly, I think
the cryonics principal preservation strategy is not the best one, as
history shows inflation actually makes very conservative principal
preservation schemes come out negative after taxes.  However, people
are swayed by the "do you want a market crash to be able to literally,
rather than just financially, destroy you.  After all, when alive, "you
still have your health."

>However, you are right in that the monetary concerns are, for me, only 
>secondary to the objection that there is no evidence that cryonic 
>preservation will now or ever allow a human to be resuscitated after years 
>of being frozen.

You are confusing evidence with proof.  Of course there is no proof, though
there is proof of some of the planks of the case.   There is tons of
*evidence* that it is possible, so much that I'll presume you've not
looked.  I mean biological nanomachines capable of performing extensive
repairs to human tissue already exist and evolved from natural selection.
We already know how to read and write DNA -- do you have any evidence that
it is *impossible* for us to understand it?   Of course, most people expect
non-biological nanomachines to be the tools, and there is a fair amount
of evidence that they may well work.  No proof yet, of course, but lots
of evidence.  There is lots of evidence that simpler organisms can survive
freezing and then self-repair without outside assistance, which is good
evidence that more complex organisms like ourselves might do the repair
with advanced external assistance.
-- 
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp.	 
The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,200,000 paid sbscrbrs.)  http://www.clari.net/brad/


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5748