X-Message-Number: 10041 Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 23:37:59 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #10019 - #10024 Hi guys! To Scott Badger: I can't really speak for anyone else but myself, but as for reversible suspension and the problem you raise I will say this: first of all, the methods cryonics researchers now have in mind to make suspension reversible do NOT involve any powerful nanotechnology at all. They work on ideas which have developed through current cryobiological research, such as the advantage of vitrifying tissues rather than freezing them. You will probably hear much more about these methods in the future. Yes, to revive someone frozen by PRESENT methods will certainly involved a much higher technology. Such a technology will very likely find such things as dealing with aging to be trivially easy. But we aren't at that stage at all, and may not reach that stage for at least a century. However, even at that stage cryonic suspension will remain valuable. The problem which it addresses is that of what to do with someone who suffers from a condition which we presently cannot cure. While I think that our technology will continue to advance, I find it quite beyond the range of possibility that at some identifiable future time we will know how to cure EVERYTHING POSSIBLE. I believe this not because I have any deep insight into the future, but because my understanding of history suggests it. Before we had nuclear reactors no one could die of radiation poisoning... just one simple example. Every technology we have produces new ways in which people can be damaged as a side effect; Im very much in favor of new technologies, but their positive effect is always an improvement over a previous situation, not totally without its own bad side effects. And naturally, a new form of damage will not come with automatic means to repair it. Thus I do not forsee any time in which cryonic suspension will cease to be useful. Moreover, agelessness is likely to be far more complex itself. Sure, we may find a way to prevent one major source of aging; the result may not be agelessness but instead a longer lifespan which then proceeds to develop its own pathologies 2 centuries later. (I think myself, for instance, that physiological interventions with drugs will increase our lifespans by as much as 50% or more, but after that some more fundamental interventions may be needed: perhaps on cell lifespans, perhaps elsewhere. And the symptoms of deterioration will be quite different from those we see in the aging now). Some people may well be caught by such problems, and their cryonic suspension would then become needed. I will finally add that even the technology of suspension can change considerably. If we learn soon how to reversible suspend people using vitrification, then that technology may someday be superseded by others. (I have ideas but doubt that I can really make any realistic predictions). That's just the way things move, in technology and science. But the basic idea of somehow storing someone until we know how to fix them will not go away. EVER. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10041