X-Message-Number: 9475
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:13:47 -0700
From: "Joseph J. Strout" <>
Subject: Billy's suspicions

In Message #9464, "Billy H. Seidel" <> wrote:

>Mike, Thank you for your recent posting.  As always I am impressed by your
>knowledge on the subject.

As am I, and thanks to Mike were in order.  If you'd stopped here, it would
have been a perfectly reasonable post on your part.

>I want to thank Charles Platt for his tireless efforts to keep the facts
>before us...

Again, I agree, and if you had even stopped here, it would have been an
acceptable post.  (Though I would have also added thanks to Robert Ettinger
for his tireless efforts to respond.)  But instead, you continued on to
cast some serious accusations at Robert Ettinger (whose name you misspelled
-- making me wonder how authoritatively you can speak on the matter) and
CI, concluding with:

>It should be clear to even the most casual
>observer that CI is a poor suspension choice and probably even does harm to
>the cryonics community.  It looks to me like a scam with almost no hope of
>eventual reanimation.

And now you have gone much too far.  First, it is not at all clear that CI
is a poor suspension choice; the concerns raised by Charles and Mike are
worth considering, but the issues are complex and no casual observer is
likely to do more than believe whoever sounds most credible -- and that's
not a great way to make a scientific evaluation.  And if you can honestly
think CI is a scam, then you haven't been paying attention at all, or else
the word "scam" means something different to you than it does to most of
us.  Generally, "scam" implies a perpetrator selling a product he doesn't
believe in, in order to grow rich.  But Bob believes in his product (he and
his wife are buying it, and several other family members have already
bought it), and nobody's getting rich from cryonics (in ANY organization).

I suspect from your comments and spelling that you're a very casual
observer indeed, which is your right -- we each pay cryonet as much
attention as much attention as we think it deserves, in comparison to other
demands on our time.  But then you should refrain from condemning
distinguished and respected members and organizations in our community.  It
is clear that Charles has put a lot of effort into researching his
criticisms (despite some communication problems that still seem to plague
us), and Mike spent a lot of time examining the evidence before writing his
critique.  You, on the other hand, have done nothing, and added nothing to
the discourse except your insults.

In short: If you're going to call someone a liar, you'd better be damn sure
you're right.

Hopefully we can put this behind us, and continue with a reasonable
discussion on these serious matters.

Best regards,
-- Joe Strout

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www.strout.net              |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9475