X-Message-Number: 9998 Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:15:59 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #9993 - #9997 Hi everyone! In reverse order, for Mr. Skrecky: if someone is young, their life insurance rates are also low. Can you expand on your claim that they cannot afford cryonics? If they are working and young, and have a decent job (ie. they aren't just uneducated laborers) then the money is there. It is not expensive to get life insurance, especially term life insurance. For Mr. Unroch: without being too intellectual about it, I will point out that those who are convinced cryonicists apply the same set of ideas to the issue of whether or not their suspension will "work" as they apply to the notion that if they are successfully suspended then the conditions which caused their suspension will someday be curable. That is the basic point made by Ettinger: in his book, he pointed out that if we believe we will someday be able to cure such things as brain damage and aging, then it's not a very great leap to also believe that we can cure whatever damage is caused by our primitive suspension methods. To actually argue validly for the idea that the problems are similar rather than wildly different (after all, we're now suspending "dead" people) requires much more information about what happens when people "die" (as seen by current medicine), the effects of suspension, and so on. I do not know of any VALID argument which does not require such information, although some cryonicists would claim to have an argument on much more general grounds. Basically such an argument would describe these conditions in detail and point out that compared to total destruction, the damage is minor. It is basic here that cryonicists do NOT believe that merely because our current legal system and medicine have declared someone "dead", that they are REALLY dead. There's even some precedent for such a belief: with proper methods, people can be revived fully after the "5 minute limit", and that period is slowly increasing. Lots of things are going on here, and I will not try to summarize them in thismessage. I'd suggest that you look back through older cryonets and older issues of CRYONICS. And as for optimism, remember that the claim is not just that we can suspend people by means which MAY someday be reversible, but that we can cure their aging and anything else wrong with them too. And I will leave you with one thought: one cryobiologist who disbelieves in cryonics has said that there will be no good grounds to accept it until someone has been frozen, revived, and then made immortal. We better be careful about just what is meant by cryonics "working". Just like Saul Kent, you are arguing that no one will take up cryonic suspension until we prove it is reversible. Your opinion will be proved or disproved as we improve our methods, which we are working to do. But for any individual, cryonics will not "work" unless they are not only revived from suspension but also they are revived with their medical problem (including their aging) completely removed. Who wants to be suspended with a fatal, presently incurable cancer only to awaken and die of it 100 years from now in a totally unfamiliar setting? I suspect you do not see that issue because you too are optimistic about what future technology can do. Pleased to meet you. I am too. But that optimism is not as widespread as you may think (I think). Finally, as someone who has also been to Japan several times, cryonics is not exactly outlawed there --- it's just that their laws decree that (except underVERY special circumstances, such as being a foreign diplomat) on death you must be cremated. Cremation makes suspension kind of difficult. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9998