X-Message-Number: 7268
From: 
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 11:38:22 -0500
Subject: resource allocation

Charles Platt has speculated on what the history of cryonics and cryobiology
would have been in the absence of the cryonics movement as it actually
developed--under the sponsorship mainly of laymen.

Undoubtedly many people had the basic idea as early as I did, or even (in the
broadest and vaguest terms) much earlier. Besides Evan Cooper, who actually
privately published a book somewhat similar to THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY in
1962 (the same year as my private publication of the first version of
PROSPECT), several other people subsequently told me they were writing, or
considering writing, such a book. (One was Larry Jensen, an art professor in
New England--haven't heard from him in many years.)  As Charles suggests, it
is virtually certain that many cryobiologists had somewhat similar thoughts,
but were scared off by fear of adverse reactions among funders, and might
have shied away even in the absence of a lay-led cryonics movement.

I have also speculated on several occasions that things might have gone much
better, even with a lay-led movement, if the leaders had been different
people, with more charisma or/and more prestige, money, etc. Preemption of
the field by us nobodies may have been tragic.

Needless to say, all such speculation has very limited value. Can we apply it
to the PRESENT in such a way as to improve our progress? My son David has
suggested that we might try to persuade someone very big, either in wealth or
prestige, to enter the lists and become the "Henry Ford of cryonics." Ford
didn't invent the automobile, but he had the first major success in
exploitation. Such an approach might, in practice (illogical though it seems)
have more motivating power than the prospect of personal life extension. In
my opinion, however, this has a reaonable chance of working ONLY when we
reach the stage of demonstrable suspended animation, or very close to it--and
at that stage we don't need the big shot.

A possible exception might be the case of someone like Michael Milken, who is
big-rich, very imaginative, and reportedly terminally ill. Reportedly, he is
personally heading up a drive to fund major research in his illness. However,
 to reach someone like that, and persuade him to drive two chariots at once,
seems a dim chance.....My guess is that we have little chance of  approaching
and persuading any major personalities; such people have too many defenses,
formal and psychological, against solicitations. We just have to wait for
them to feel the urge and come to us, or bypass us and do their own things.

When my science fiction story about cryonics ("The Penultimate Trump") was
published in 1948, I didn't expect it to move mountains of inertia; but I did
expect that major players would appear in the near future, just because of
the obvious rationale and the chance of saving their own lives. When this
didn't happen, I had to do something, and wrote a book. I felt I had to do
something again in the mid-seventies, when the existing cryonics
organizations seemed unsatisfactory to some of us; we formed Cryonics
Institute. 

Currently CI and Alcor, in cooperation with the Vissers and with Dr. Pichugin
in the Ukraine, and with several other collaborators, are actively engaged in
cryobiological research. Others with cryonics connections are also active in
such research, including BioPreservation; and Paul Wakfer is trying to
implement a long term research project in cooperation with a well known
cryobiologist. Some of these same players are also engaged in research in
interventive gerontology. There is also reason to think that Mrs. Visser has
provided a stimulus to research that is spreading, or soon will, to the
general cryobiological community.

The bottom line? I never like to act as a wet blanket to new people or people
with "new" ideas; no telling what will work, even if it has failed in the
past. But I still have a duty to give my assessment, which is that the BEST
we can do in our MAJOR effort is to keep on doing what we KNOW we can do,
viz. to maintain, build and improve our organizations and our own research
efforts. We probably need more troops, not more generals; more drawers of
water and hewers of wood, not more idea men; we need more of YOUR money and
OUR money. Maybe some belated messiah will wake up one day, maybe not; but
God helps those who help themselves.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society


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