X-Message-Number: 9671 Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 03:56:27 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #9649 - #9663 Hi guys once more! To Saul Kent, again: I asked you to define "failure" of cryonics. My own definition would mean exactly that our present methods had somehow been shown not to work in all cases so far. Your last message, which claims to provide a definition, does not do so at all. Instead it repeats your call for more research and describes the overwhelming need for such research. Do not be surprized that I suggested the conclusions which I suggested. If cryonics has "failed" in the sense I give above, then why not thaw out the bodies that we once thought were patients? And keep in mind that I DO NOT BELIEVE that cryonics has failed. There is something quite essential going on here. We are dealing with a technical advance. Whether or not it succeeds or fails does not, will not, and cannot depend on the number of those who believe it has succeeded or failed. That's not how the world works, in case you have forgotten. Medicine does not succeed or fail based on a popular vote. For that matter, a research program does not succeed or fail depending on the number of people who believe it ought to do so. I too, perhaps even more than you, know that I am growing older and want the best suspension possible. And yes, I have put my money where my mouth is, and did so even years ago. If we develop a means to reversibly suspend (even) brains I will be among the first to cheer ... and also to feel relieved. Yet for CRYONICS suspended animation is only a step, and many more steps are needed. Am I glad that you are putting so much of your own time and money into research to improve suspensions? Most certainly. Do I believe that such research will convince much larger numbers of people to join a cryonics society? In percentage terms it probably will --- cryonics societies being now a minuscule percentage of the population. But we will not see anywhere near even a large minority of the population at large joining cryonics societies because we can now do reversible suspensions. In that sense, I do not believe that successful suspended animation will change our situation very much. The entire thrust of your messages, as I read them, seems to IDENTIFY cryonics and suspended animation. Yes. We most certainly do not have any form of suspended animation now that works. And so the easy conclusion is that cryonics itself does not "work"... a conclusion which only follows if you identify the two. I DO NOT. At one time, if I recall correctly, you told me a story about the cryobiologist Sherman. It seems that Sherman was saying that the success of cryonics would be proven when someone had been suspended, revived, and made immortal. And we all laughed at that idea. Yet Sherman under- stood what Bob was saying: and that last clause still remains: "and made immortal". While by its definition immortality can never be attained, we can hope at least for total reversal of agng, which (note, despite various drugs etc) has not yet been attained. Moreover the notion that cryonics must be proven to "work" in Sherman's sense remains laughable --- though every other medical procedure must essentially meet exactly the same test. Clearly if we really want reversal of our aging, we will have to consider using suspended animation to reach a time in which that becomes possible --- though just when that time will come, and what it will imply, remain unknown. We should not apply standard medical tests of success to cryonics (and I suspect strongly that in real human cases we will find them hard to apply even if we can produce experimentally reversible suspended animation in animals). You do not have to argue the need for research with me, because I accepted it many years ago. But if your notion of "success" of cryonics requires some kind of mass movement, then please clarify your reasons. And frankly, I even think it dangerous to identify the "success" of cryonics with proof of successful suspended animation (even of a brain). Just as successful suspended animation would be far from enough to show that CRYONICS "works", its failure does not prove that CRYONICS has failed. And if we come to identify the two, then someday all those who were not suspended with the techniques we hope to have soon WILL be thawed out. After all, their cryonic suspensions "failed", did they not? Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9671