X-Message-Number: 5941
From: (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
Subject: Re: Virtue of suffering
Date: 15 Mar 96 08:12:06 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <> <>
In <> John Sharman <>
writes:
>> ...if I'm in an
>> airplane crash, and only pieces of my brain are found the next
>> day, I want them frozen anyway.
>You really mean that? We all have some urge to survive, some will to
>live, but are you able to to explain just what it is that makes it so
>difficult for you to contemplate letting go and passing on to the
>nothingness or whatever else it may be that the future holds?
I love life intensely. It's the kind of thing that if you
don't understand it, I can't possibly explain it to you.
Loving life, by the way, is not the same as fearing death.
It's actually mildly amusing to be teased so often for "fearing
death" by people who, more than anything, are afraid of life.
>> My family has ample life insurance
>> protection, and would not suffer (financially that is) by such a
>> final frivolous indulgence of my wish to be cloned in the future.
>> God knows many people spend more on life-long smoking habits.
>Cloned? Why? That's not even a perpetuation of "you". You might as well
>endow a trust fund to erect statues of you.
Why not a living, breathing replica? Okay, I know you're
going to ask the perennial question: *Why not just give the money
to my kids?* Suppose I plan on having four children. Each child
would normally cost perhaps $200,000 to raise and put through college.
Suppose, however, that my wife and I decide we are going to do something
a little special for our 3rd and 4th children. Instead of mixing
our genes, we choose our 3rd and 4th children to have our own original
genes. We further choose to postpone the birth of these children
for 100 years, entrusting their care to our grandchildren (born of our
first two children.) These children will cost us only $100,000
contemporary dollars each instead of the typical $200,000. Thus
our first two children will have an extra $200,000 available to
them, and we will have more time to raise them well. Furthermore,
the population burden of the planet will lessened by the long
postponement of our last two children.
What then is the outcome of my wife's and my decision to
be frozen?
1) Our children have *more* money, not less.
2) We'll have more time to spend raising our children.
3) Planet Earth will be healthier with fewer people on it.
And the above scenario assumes the *worst* biological outcome of
cryonics (mere cloning). So what's the problem?
>> I've said all this because there is a slot on CryoCare's
>> paperwork in which members state conditions under which they do
>> not want to be cryopreserved. The most common preference is that
>> "any biological remains whatsoever" be frozen.
>But Cryocare acquiesces by offering that option. Why? That a person
>should choose such option suggest to me not that he is the victim of a
>duping, but rather that he is an obsessive nut. Freezing a body or just
>a brain under (as near as possible) optimal conditions is one thing, but
>"Scrape me into a bucket and put it in the fridge," is another.
Actually, it's "Scrape me into a bucket and put it in the
*freezer*." I know of at least one (non-cryonics) firm
in the US that offers to store your DNA for posterity. Why shouldn't
CryoCare offer that option to our members? Actually CryoCare is
about to become the first cryonics organization that stores DNA of
its *living* members, allowing the possibility of a future clone
even in the unfortunate event that there's nothing left to "scrape
into a bucket".
***************************************************************************
Brian Wowk CryoCare Foundation 1-800-TOP-CARE
President Your Gateway to the Future
http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/
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