X-Message-Number: 7192
Date: 	Thu, 21 Nov 1996 15:54:54 -0800
From:  (Olaf Henny)
Subject: Grand Opportunity to Address Large Audience

>Subject:Message #7182 Time Magazine
>From:  ( RON SELKOVITCH)

There is an incredible opportunity to reach a *huge* well educated  audience
with concise and factual letters to the editor by *SCIENTISTS*, (Wakfer,
Strout and Wowk come to mind - oops, I am getting into trouble with all the
others I left out) to straighten out some of the misconceptions and
including as sources for more info. <sci.cryonics>, <sci.nanotech> as well
as the URLs of the pertinent web sites. Time Magazine usually publishes
several letters on the same subject, so it might be worthwhile for the
writers to co-ordinate efforts and announce *different* internet contacts.

The important thing is, that we, who are not as well versed in these
subjects stay out of it, and do not use up the print space, that should go
to the more competent.

>This weeks Time magazine had a cover article entitled 'Forever Young' which
>discusses the possibility of living vastly extended lives and what has been
>discovered along these lines. Also included is a small sidebar entitled
>'What May be Next' which includes as follows:-
>
><Futurists like to speculate about the means by which we may defeat the
>aging process (and a few cryonics shops have already started taking orders)
>Some antiaging technologies have a basis in science and also have a long
>way to go.
>CRYONICS
>Promise. By freezing the entire body - or to save storage costs, just the
>head and brain - cryonicists hope to preserve a patient who has died until
>a time when physicians will be able to thaw and repair the frozen tissues,
>cure the disease that caused the death, and then bring the person back to
>life.
>
>Reality Check. Preliminary animal studies show that some tissue (rat
>hearts, for example) can be cryo-preserved and then revived in spite of the
>extensive damage that freezing does to cells.Whether these techniques will
>work for entire organisms, especially ones that have ceased living is not
>clear. Even so, some 60 people in the U.S. have paid to have their bodies-
>or at least their heads- preserved indefinitely.
>
>NANOTECHNOLOGY
>Promise. With continued progress in microminiaturization scientists who
>believe in nanotechnology-technology that operates on the molecular, or
>nanometer, scale- predict that we will someday be able to build microscopic
>devices that will be injected into the body to fight disease at the
>cellular level- excising tumors, say, or cleaning out clogged arteries.
>
>Reality Check. Microsurgery, which replaces the surgeons hands with probes
>and scalpels, has yet to become routine, and its smallest tools are still
>hundreds of times as large as a nanotech machine. Even if the tools can
>someday be radically shrunk and mounted onto robots the size of a molecule,
>patients might balk at the idea of invisible, artificially intelligent
>machines roaming around inside their body.>
>
>It may not be much, but at least its not negative.

>Ron S
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Greed is a very positive motivating force.  Without it (the desire to 
 possess) man would still not have captured the fire, and would probably 
 still be swinging from the trees in some of the warmer regions of this globe.
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