X-Message-Number: 9141
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9131 - #9132
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 22:29:36 -0800 (PST)

Hi!

To Peter Merel:

You may be quite right about how many people spend their lives acting out their
dramas. HOWEVER that attitude simply doesn't work if you want to live forever.
Even the notion that your life is to be a saga doesn't work. AND it is NOT 
presumptuous to try to alter your fate, and think of ways to do so, rather than
simply following a dramatic path which has been traced by millions before you.


A drama exists only when there is an audience. If I understand you, you are also
saying that many people play their lives out for an audience. This again is
a good insight in how many people behave and act, but should not be seen as
the only way human beings can construct their lives. And those who construct 
their lives on the basis of how they appear to others WILL have a deep problem
with cryonics and even with immortality of any kind, but especially with 
cryonics. They cannot bring their audience with them when they are suspended.
Hence they cannot see the worth of suspension at all. You may also have given
an explanation of why so many PROMINENT people fail to become cryonicists:
they will lose their audience, and on revival must once more spend years to
create another one.... and may even discover, finally, that they now live in
a world in which that relation does not exist.

So do you count yourself among these people or not? 

I have thought for many years that the way of thinking and feeling that a real
immortal would have could not base itself on the same ideas as those implicitly
held by most people today. And yes, all cryonicists are not merely trying to 
get themselves suspended (or otherwise avoid death) but working out, slowly 
and no doubt with many mistakes along the way, just how an immortal person
who is HIMSELF or HERSELF, rather than an actor in some drama, might think and
act. Sure, we would all have histories, and like everyone those histories
will contain many mistakes and triumphs, too. But to turn them into drama
(especially in the classical literary sense of drama) would completely fail
to work. We will have outgrown that.

To Joe Strout:

1. Have you answered my questions? Are you thinking about them?
2. About organ donations: I see no ESSENTIAL reason why an organ donation would
   be impossible, but presently, with cryonic suspension done as it is, that
   seems quite impossible. (And I would add that most suspendees are old, and
   the ideal donor is much younger: whether or not someone wants to donate
   their organ(s) they will probably not be candidates, anyway). 

   But forgetting the practical issues for a moment (thought they now are
   CONTROLLING) the best time to remove an organ would be very early in 
   the suspension process, before cryoprotectant had been introduced, but
   after the blood had been replaced. This would also require careful attention
   to at least temporary repairs of the vascular system to the donated organ,
   since otherwise the loss of blood (or solution) would severely impair
   suspension. That's likely to be so even for kidneys, which are popular;
   for hearts or heart-lung transplants, the problem is worse. This means
   that at a minimum the surgery would have to be much more complex, and 
   probably even require two skilled surgeons rather than just one.

   Any removal of organs would also have to be very quick, as would the 
   repair after removal. Given the fact that it takes skills to suspend
   someone in the first place, the practice and skills needed to include
   organ donation in the procedure, especially when most suspension patients
   are unlikely to be organ donors in the first place, --- that practice 
   and skill are not going to be developed for some time. I'm not at all
   sure that even the best surgeon for organ donation could do the operation
   fast enough for us! However speaking abstractly, it could probably be
   done with thought and practice. 

   This comes from what I, Thomas Donaldson, understand both about organ
   donation and suspension. I'd be interested in the opinions of those who
   have carried out many suspensions, and especially interested if they
   can bring up FUNDAMENTAL reasons why it is impossible --- reasons which
   don't have to do with present methods for cryonics suspension at all. The
   one ALMOST fundamental reason I know of is that organ donations from
   elderly people just aren't done... and most suspension patients are
   elderly. If they are not, then all kinds of other difficulties will
   get in the way.

			Best to all and long long life,

					Thomas Donaldson

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