X-Message-Number: 7597 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #7579 - #7589 Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 20:46:28 -0800 (PST) Hi again! More about cryonics and its purpose and meaning: 1. Mike Darwin is entirely correct about the need for feedback. That does not require that the patient arrive for suspension with no prior damage. If we really want to get feedback, the thing to do is to examine the effects of our methods on the brains of "patients" (dogs or other animals) when we begin them under all the many conditions in which patients have been suspended. There may even be a SMALL amount of room for taking a little bit of each human patient's brain for study, but just which bit and where clearly need thought. Not only that, but we naturally want to be suspended by the best available methods --- which means that all the cryonics societies should work together to make their methods better. That IS science, even though no actual suspension counts as science. I would finally add that when we use ANY result of scientific investigation (not just in cryonics) we aren't doing science. We are going about our ordinary life. I will soon board an airliner to go to Phoenix. In so doing, I'm using the results of a very long history of study of airflow, chemistry, physics, and so on and on. I can hardly be said to be DOING science when I ride the airliner. In exactly that sense, OF COURSE we are not doing science when we are suspended. But what should be happening in cryonics is that we work to improve our methods, and THAT is the science. Briefly: the opposite of science is NOT religion or magic. The opposite of science is ordinary life, so far as it has an opposite. 2. Prometheus, and Paul's Prometheus Project, can easily do something which a strictly cryonicist group cannot. It can claim to be developing suspended animation rather than improving suspension methods, for instance. And I agree with Paul that this subject deserves very high priority. As for suspended animation for medical use, I've already discussed that. If people accept such a use, they will discover that they accept cryonics too, though it may take them a while. I explained why in my last message. But cryonics societies should remain willing to suspend members even if they happen not to need suspension under the conditions in which suspended animation can work. Doing so is their reason for existence: by doing so, they not only may save the life of their member, but they are true to their fundamental ideas. We freeze people not because we know how we might someday revive them, but to give them the opportunity of eventual revival even if we have no idea at all how that might happen. We must not mix the goals of Prometheus with those of cryonics societies, though we all certainly know that now, in 1997, there is a close coincidence in terms of the research we want to do. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7597