X-Message-Number: 8924
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8915 - #8922
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 20:40:47 -0800 (PST)

Hi everyone!

A few comments. To Paul Wakfer, I was a little jocular. However I would also
say that most fatal diseases do happen to those who are old, and I personally
believe that they happen to older people because in many ways their resistance
has gone down. What that boils down to is that for many --- even the majority
--- of cases, suspended animation will only work well if they can be cured
of their illness AND rejuvenated (perhaps not totally, but to some extent
certainly). While I believe that is possible, many ordinary people do not.

However you're quite right that a majority is not the same as everyone. So
there will be people, particularly children, whose lives are saved by 
suspended animation. The younger someone is, the more he/she stands to 
benefit from use of such a procedure ALONE, without other more radical 
developments. (A cure for their disease will be needed, of course).

As for the majority of people with heart disease or cancer, suspended animation
may once and for all show their relationship to aging. And even if they're
not totally decrepit, the problem with aging is that, sure, we can cure
this disease, and we can cure that disease, but ultimately something gets
them. That's why the famous "War on Cancer" has turned into a concealed 
defeat. Right now medicine and the popular mind is very slowly coming 
to realize that if we want to increase our lifespans then we're going to
have to work on aging. Even things like the recent NEWSWEEK issue tell us
that --- though to someone who has been interested in this issue for the
last 25 years, and for all that time felt that working on cancer or heart
disease as if they were not usually themselves consequences of other, deeper
changes (aging) would consistently turn out to be a waste of money and 
energy.

And yes, I got cancer myself. And managed to survive, at least until now.
Even though I do follow work on brain tumors and their cure, I still believe
that most money and effort spent on cancer might be far more productively
spent on finding ways to slow down aging (or stop and reverse it, if we
can). I would be surprised if many other cryonicists don't agree with me.

But one consequence of that relation is simply that suspended animation in
an older person just won't give him/her much extra life, if any. Just how
people and most doctors will respond in 20 years when the Prometheus 
Project may succeed I can't say. There have been slow changes. (And 
incidentally, one consequence of aging is that without treatment the 
muscles deteriorate. So that it is really accurate to say that --- again,
without treatment --- by the time you're over 90 you might not be able
to walk across the room without help. Just hope that treatments arrive
and become widely applied!).

I do hope for Prometheus to succeed, at a minimum, with brains. That is
an issue which cannot be covered over by any amount of technological
blathertalk. And I also hope that aging will be far more prominent as
a subject for research and public interest in 20 years time --- if so,
many rather than very few would see the merit of suspended animation for
old people, not just young. But still, there are implications of 
beliefs, and people behave according to their beliefs. Those beliefs will
strongly affect how the public sees suspended animation when it arrives.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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