X-Message-Number: 5959
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: To John Sharman and others
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 23:03:09 -0800 (PST)

To John Sharman, once more:

You should know first that so far as we are able we ARE working on the problem
of making a better suspension (or cryopreservation). You should also know 
how many cryonicists there are, right now: very roughly, about 1000. Even
though a community of 1000 devotes a lot of its resources to the needed
research, it will not make rapid progress. In terms of our desire to be 
suspended (or cryopreserved) that fact does not change our desire. It is, 
however, one reason why we do not intend to wait until we can revive a gerbil
from suspension.

Not only that, but we must deal with lots of other issues, legal ones included,
to make any progress, even in research. There are a few cryobiologists who 
want to be frozen themselves, but even they get their research money from 
agencies who aren't interested in human cryopreservation at all ... and in 
some cases, such as Pegg and the Society for Cryobiology, are actively opposed.

If you wish to contribute to the research needed, your contributions are more
than welcome. If you simply wish to stand on the sidelines and carp, you will
be ignored.

As for nanotechnology, some might count me as a cryonicist who does not 
believe that nanotechnology will come near to doing what is claimed in the time
scales claimed. 

IN THE LITERAL SENSE, nanotechnology consists of any means we
have to manipulate events on a molecular scale; such means include those from

biotechnology (which, though many devotees of nanotechnology refuse to admit 
it)is now farthest along in terms of the power and variety of manipulations it
makes possible, and nowhere near exhaustion. Nanotechnology also includes
materials science: the invention of plastics was the start of this science, 
but scientists have been able to produce many materials with surprizing and
useful structures at the molecular level, far beyond plastics. Some are even
thinking about making systems which on a molecular level work like molecule-
sized machines (I do not refer to those allied with Drexler, but to others). 
I will point out that lots of biological molecules work as molecule-sized
machines: that is how and why they do what they do. (The class of enzymes,
which is very large, consists of just such molecular machines). And there is
also considerable work in the computing community to do such things as make
memories out of suitably arranged molecules. This latter work has not yet 
produced devices on the market, but very well may do so in the near future.

Unfortunately, some cryonicists (and others who are not cryonicists) do not
mean by nanotechnology what I have described in the last paragraph, but some-
thing else more specific, a constraint which I think unwise to make. I do 
not know or claim to know just when our abilities in nanotechnology (in the
broad sense I have just described) will allow us to repair people suspended
with present technology. I will say, though, that we have only just begun
to use these ideas, and there is not reason at all why some version of 
nanotechnology will not be able to carry out any conceivable manipulation of
every cell in any suspended person's brain, doing whatever repairs and
replacement might be needed TO EVERY CELL AT ONCE.

Currently we see great excitement and concern, not just in the scientific 
but even in the legal world, about manipulation of genes. Such manipulation,
of course, gives one more example of nanotechnology. But if we think just a 
little more broadly, this excitement is excitement about some very minor 
and crude advances. We have climbed to the top of some rather small hills, but
when we look out from our newly acquired abilities it's very plain that 
we can go orders of magnitude further than we have. I would agree that we
see a vast mountain range before us, but would add that it only seems so
close because of the illusion caused by the way it now dominates the sky. To
actually scale it will take hundreds of years. 

But then, in suspension, we can wait for as long as it takes. 

Such a possibility underlies the thinking of virtually every cryonicist. In
fact, it was the thinking of CRYONICISTS that helped produce the general 
idea of nanotechnology, not the other way around. (You can see this if you
look at the early books of Drexler, who invented and popularized the
word "nanotechnology").  

I hope that this explains the relation of nanotechnology to cryonics, in a
better way than all the media hype has done before.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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