X-Message-Number: 7771
Date: 27 Feb 97 00:52:40 EST
From: "Stephen W. Bridge" <>
Subject: Patient revival reviewed

To CryoNet
>From Steve Bridge, Chairman
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
February 26, 1997
 
I haven't been active on CryoNet for a few weeks, with my move back to
Indianapolis.  But here I am again.  Please note my Compuserve email
address <>  The former address: 
should NOT BE USED.  I cannot access that account from Indiana.
 
In reply to   Message #7743 (and #7757)
From:  (Mike Coward)
Subject: Deciding Who To Trust With My Future
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 20:41:07 -0500
 
Mike asks about reanimation costs and procedures and quotes Alcor's PR
material as evidence that Alcor offers such services, "Any cryonics
organization has a moral and legal obligation to attempt to revive its
patients."
 
First, Mike, many aspects of this topic have been discussed on CryoNet
previously.  If you will go to the CryoNet web page and search for the
subjects "reanimation" and "revival," you will find much wise and
thoughtful pondering of these questions, including posts from me.  But a
very brief summary of current status is probably useful here, too.
 
1.  We can't do it yet, Mike.  Patients cannot be revived or repaired
today.  The damage from disease, the dying process, aging, and freezing
is way too great to be treated for decades yet, if not centuries.
 
2.  So no one can truly "offer" revival services yet.
 
3.  On the other hand, the eventual offering of revival technology is
implicit in the literature of every cryonics organization.  The entire
*point* of doing cryopreservation is so that the patient might be revived
someday.
 
4.  Alcor is only slightly different in that we may have made the
commitment to revive our patients more *explicit* than some.  We fully
expect and plan that Alcor will be an organization that preserves, stores,
AND revives its members.  Revival includes a commitment to seeing that our
patients (which almost certainly will include ALL OF ALCOR'S CURRENT
LEADERS, too) are reintroduced to that future society, whatever it is.
 
5.  It is most likely that the last people frozen will be the first people
revived.  They will have the fewest disease or injuries, will have the
best suspension procedures performed on them, will have the shortest
course of "dying" (because they will be placed into suspension as soon as
it is clear their condition warrants it, long before their heart stops on
its own), and will have the most living friends and relatives to actively
push for (perhaps financing the research for) their revival.
 
6.  Alcor, at least, has set its suspension minimums at a high enough
level that we believe the investments in our Patient Care Fund (almost
Patient Care *Trust*, with a few more documents to sign) will pay for
ongoing patient care expenses (nitrogen, etc.), the research into
reanimation, and the reanimation itself.  Just as with a new model of car
or computer, the first reanimation will be extremely expensive.  However,
as costs are spread out over thousands or more revivals, the average cost
for each might be manageable.  Only time will tell.
 
>What means of reanimation are proposed?
>This is of concern to me as it is a possibility that when I awake
>humanity may be reengineered.  Consciousness as I know it may be
>unrecognizable.
 
I think it is extremely unlikely that ALL humans will do *anything.*  Some
current "humans" may no longer be human in that future; some may be alien
in many ways; some may be more machine or information pattern than human.
But many will be recognizable.  They will be the ones reviving you -- the
most radically changed ones may not even care about reviving suspendees.
 
Most of us at Alcor assume that the best way to initially revive someone
is as a human being not much different than today (except for young and
healthy).  That revived human can be shown whatever options are then
available (or in vogue) and will choose one from column A, B, C, etc.
 
If you think you want to be revived differently (for instance, perhaps at
that time we could create a computer simulation of you that we could ask
"How do you want to be revived?"), we ask that you include such
speculation (for it cannot be rigid instructions) in documents with your
suspension legal papers.
 
But ALL of this is speculation.  You won't get a CHANCE at revival if you
don't commit to preservation FIRST.
 
Find what group you are most comfortable with today (based on whatever
criteria are important to you) -- and then become part of the SOLUTION.
Find ways to obtain and donate that nasty money stuff.  Or move to a
hotbed of cryonics and contribute your labor and energy.  Don't be a
watcher.  Be a doer.
 
Steve Bridge


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