X-Message-Number: 9645
Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 08:45:02 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Reply to Saul Kent

Hi everyone!
This message is mainly to Saul.

First of all, I apologize and retract (slightly) some of the things 
I have said about your opinions. I was reacting not to your essay
itself (I got on the net after you had put it up on Cryonet, and
began by hearing about it rather than getting the original) but to
what various others thought you had said.

At the same time, now that I have your essay itself, I must say that
their misinterpretations are quite logical and justified. If our 
current product is so bad, just why should we still provide it? If
cryonics has "failed" (whatever that may mean) then why should we
promote it at all? For that matter, if it really has "failed", why
should we bother to keep those now in suspension in suspension?
It's failed, hasn't it?

I do not intend to defend everything Ettinger has done since he
wrote the PROSPECT, nor his response to your essay. However if I
read your essay alone I would conclude that you never really under-
stood what cryonics was about in the first place. What it is about
is important and fundamental, and is not really affected by whether
or not we can or cannot NOW have suspended animation. What the 
PROSPECT was saying, fundamentally, is that many medical ideas
which are very firmly held, UP TO AND INCLUDING THE NOTION OF 
DEATH ITSELF, depend on assumptions and social practices which 
may very well change due to some future technology. Even now, 
anyone who would so blithely assert that present suspension 
patients cannot be revived due to the extent of damage they have
suffered will say that based on common, firmly held beliefs which
have NO scientific proof. How can we prove such a thing is 
impossible? The very most we can do is to say that WE do not
know how to revive them.

And at no time in the past, and no time in the future, will that
WE ever understand all the conditions to which people might be
subject to state of someone with condition X that they cannot be
cured. WE must learn both patience and a sense of our limits, and
come to understand that there are universes within universes that
we do NOT understand.

The justification for keeping people is suspension whom we do not
now have even the vaguest idea for how to bring back to life 
comes directly from that understanding. They are not monuments or
religious objects. They are patients which at present we do not
know how to cure.

And look here, Saul: suppose, as we both hope, that we CAN find
ways to reversibly preserve brains. Both of us would choose that
option over simple burial because we have the belief that once
our brain can be kept in good condition, means will be found to 
restore us to bodies and good health. And if complete suspended
restore us to bodies and good health. And when complete suspended
animation arrives (as both of us hope, soon) then we both believe
that restoring our aged bodies to youth and health will again
become possible. I must point out that these beliefs put us in 
a crashing minority. 

For that matter, the entire idea of suspended animation for
MEDICAL reasons depends on a belief that presently incurable
conditions will someday become curable. And when we think carefully
about that, it's plain that this involves assumptions most 
doctors would dispute. The problem is not with conditions for
which research is now trying to find an answer, the problem is with
those for which NO ONE NOW believes a cure is possible. Like, for
instance, "death after 5 minutes" was believed incurable only 
15 years ago.

One side of this problem is that most "incurable conditions" are
so poorly understood that no one can say just how long you would
have to be stored until (if and when) a cure was found. Pick a 
time. There is no time at which more than a few people could 
benefit from a cure which everyone believed would come but just
hadn't quite arrived just yet. That's how these things work. If you
really want to use suspended animation for medical reasons, then
you must accept that suspension must go on for an indefinite
period into the future.

And as I said before in a previous message, OF COURSE most 
authorities will oppose this idea. Cryonicists are telling them that
they are wrong. And it will take a major turn in the cast of 
 mind of anyone to realize that our present beliefs (medical and
other) are only very poor approximations to those which people of 
the 21st Century, or the 22nd, or the 23rd will hold. Someday, I
hope, people will learn their limits rather than make the 
al-inclusive claims so many make now, but that day may take 
centuries to come. (And naturally, with Authorities against it,
most ordinary people will find it very hard to accept us, too).

What do you really want from cryonics? I want my chance at 
immortality. But if you expect large numbers of people to flock
to us, and measure the success of cryonics by the number of its
adherents, then you will wait for a long long time. If you expect
even most doctors to accept cryonics then you will be waiting for
a long long time.

I myself feel very glad that at last serious research has once
more started, and was happy to pledge $1000 US to such research 
every year. But I felt glad not because I expected any flood of
new cryonicists but because it would help my own drive for 
immortality (a belief that most people do not hold, and many
would consider hubristic).

So what do you want? 

And finally I must point out, not just for Saul but for everyone,
that it would be the worst decision of all to decide on the basis
of the scanty knowledge we now have, and will have, that because
the brains of previous patients seem irretrievably messed up, 
that they should be thawed out and abandoned. No, I am not saying
that you have said that directly, but once more there remains a
logical implication. To take such an attitude is directly against
that fundamental insight behind cryonics. We must be willing to 
store our patients into the indefinite future, for otherwise we
may someday be ourselves the patients thawed out "because we now
know their condition is incurable".

AS for what cryonics now provides, it provides a POSSIBILITY of
continued life. It is by research that we can make that possibility
much larger for future patients (among which we may well be).
Will cryonics ever "WORK"? Well, for individuals we will someday
bring them back, and cure them of their condition. But there will
aalways be those we do not know how to cure, who lie in suspension
indefinitely waiting for some cure we now cannot even imagine. And
I promise that those patients will seem, to some, good proof that
cryonics has failed, and the lucky survivors will be thought of
not as proof that cryonics has worked but as rare cases of 
purely random success. (After all, everyone knows how to cure
condition X, but those others look quite impossible.... So clearly
cryonics has been almost a total failure).

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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