X-Message-Number: 9756 Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 09:57:24 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #9750 - #9754 Hi everyone! First of all, Kent and Darwin are pessimistic about CURRENT methods. There is a research effort among cryonicists going on right now to produce greatly improved methods. One estimate, which I actually think reasonable, is that for $1 million/year we should be able to REVERSIBLY preserve brains in 10 years. I do hope John de Rivaz and Tom Mazanec are aware of this effort and willing to contribute. To Tom Mazanec I also have a question: if this is the reason for your own position toward cryonics (I don't really know whether or not you are even signed up) then are you willing to help cryonicists in their efforts to improve the process? If you aren't signed up and don't want to help, then you might be casting doubt on your own theory about why so few sign up. The basic idea is to vitrify rather than freeze; this has been pushed by a major cryobiologist who until recently was forbidden to consider freezing brains by his superiors, but who has now openly joined with Saul Kent and others. Basically, improved suspensions do not look as if they will require any totally unimagined technology. Not only that, but they could probably be attained with an amount of research money quite small by current standards (remember that cryonicists are thin on the ground and this would be a BIG effort for us even if it would be tiny for other groups --- which of course do not want to undertake any such research). I'll even go so far as to say that reviving PRESENT suspension patients (at least some of them) very likely also does not involve any wildly new technology. But the amount of research needed ... to make the tools to make the tools, among other things, is vastly greater. For THAT, if we don't grow very much but just continue, eventually the problem will be solved by the equivalent of a 25th Century kids chemistry set at a nomimal price. And if that's what happens, I guess that all those people waiting for a revival before they join will just have to die. Too bad. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9756