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

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