X-Message-Number: 9760
Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 09:41:03 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #9755 - #9758

Hi everyone!

I'd like to add to Saul Kent's discussion of cryonics once we can
reversibly preserve brains.

One basic issue is often forgotten. This is that even the notion of
"illness" changes with time and will continue to do so. Moreover,
just what "illnesses" we become subject to is strongly affected by
our medical science. If we look back 200 years, few people died of
Alzheimer's (not yet distinguished) or even of heart disease or
cancer. Mostly they died of various bacterial and viral diseases,
as we would now characterize them. (At that time, of course, the
notion of bacterial or viral diseases did not exist).

To say that some people will still meet with "misadventures" is
quite true, and it means that we may need cryonics for a VERY long
time. But to amplify on what those "misadventures" might be, we not
only have accidents of the kind we're used to, but others which 
will happen in the society of 2050 but could not happen today.
For instance, I expect widespread use of tame viruses; but then
sometimes those viruses may cease to be tame (some of them) and
cause quite new and damaging diseases. Radiation sickness due to
accidents in space travel may become common. Genetic modifications
which not only fail but become dangerous due to accidents in their
production could also happen. Even now we've started to use foods
which have been specially modified genetically by the latest 
techniques. Sometimes those modifications may turn bad.

I'm actually in favor of using all the technologies I've just
mentioned, and there are many I don't mention that I'm
also in favor of. But it's always an issue of exchanging one 
danger and/or source of damage for another one, which may actually
be much less but still refuses to be ZERO. I do not believe that
there can EVER be a time in which we will not need cryonics ---
though the number of cryonics patients may (after increasing as 
everyone eventually signs up) will decrease at any one time       
compared to a subsequent time. 

The basic idea of cryonics: to store people we don't know how to
fix until we learn how to fix them --- is not going to go away.
Ever.

			Best and long long life,
				(despite its many dangers!),

				Thomas Donaldson

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