X-Message-Number: 6911
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 21:05:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: False Hope

On Sun, 15 Sep 1996, Bob Ettinger wrote:

> I have suggested that pledgers to the Prometheus Project (PP) might, right
> now, donate a year's PP pledge, half to the Immortalist Society and half to
> Alcor, tax exempt. (Donate, not pledge.) This would, in my opinion, help in
> our effort to apply and extend the Visser method THIS YEAR, hence make a very
> large step forward in cryonics research--possibly even produce superior
> cryonic suspension for our very next patient (who might be someone you know).

Bob, I know you from your writing as a cautious and ethical man who has 
always gone out of his way NOT to create false hope. This paragraph reads 
as if someone else wrote it. How can you possibly suggest that the Visser 
method might help to save the long-term life of a friend or loved one, 
when so far as I can tell, there is absolutely ZERO information on the 
effects of Visser's protocol on a human brain? In fact, since there has 
been no attempt to answer my list of questions (even in general terms) re 
the work so far, I have to assume that you don't even have good data on 
the condition of the rat hearts. Surely it is indefensible to hold out 
hope to people, in an attempt to solicit their money, when you have 
absolutely no way of knowing if the Visser protocol is going to be any 
use at all on the human brain, which is massive compared with a rat heart 
and is composed of totally different cells that behave differently when 
frozen. (Excuse me for stating the obvious; it seems to be necessary.)

If people want to give money purely as an act of faith, because they like 
you and Hugh Hixon and Fred and Linda Chamberlain, that's fine. Indeed, 
Alcor has solicited general donations for unspecified expenditures for 
many years, and I have no problem with that, either.

I do worry greatly however when the fund-raising is coupled with wild 
statements about a "breakthrough" and suggestions that this new method 
may soon be enabling unsurpassed cryopreservation. Often, when I do PR 
for cryonics, I have to answer suspicions that it is nothing but a scam. 
This kind of fund raising is going to make my denials much less credible 
than before.


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