X-Message-Number: 6773 From: Brian Wowk <> Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 17:55:29 -0500 Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Waiting in pure hope Thomas Donaldson writes on CryoNet: >Doctors will someday become converted to our viewpoint on "death" and "aging", >and our viewpoint on cryonics too. But until that time, to anyone who does >not accept the idea of waiting in pure hope (note that there can NEVER be >any guarantees that treatments will be found in any fixed time), suspension >will seem just as much a leap into the dark as it does now. There are lots of people (millions of people) sympathetic to keeping near-brain-dead patients on respirators at outrageous cost for the sake of "pure hope." Indeed, MOST of medicine today is still oriented around hope, not certainty. In my opinion, the biggest reason that popular "hope" does not translate into cryonics support is that we are utterly unable to demonstate (that's *demonstrate*, not argue) that cryonics patients are anything worth hoping for. There is a line between life and death in the public mind, and cryonics patients are still on the wrong side of that line. Nobody will wait in pure hope for patients who they believe to be dead. Reversible brain cryopreservation will irrefutably move cryonics patients to the other side of that line. The focus of cryonics debate will shift from whether cryonics CAN preserve life, to whether cryonics SHOULD preserve life in this way. The effects of this will be so broad I can't begin to enumerate them. It will be an entirely new ball game-- one I richly look forward to. Rather than arguing esoteric science and engineering with morons, we'll just look down from the sky, like the Wright brothers, and laugh. *************************************************************************** Brian Wowk CryoCare Foundation 1-800-TOP-CARE President Human Cryopreservation Services http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6773