X-Message-Number: 1018
Date: 18 Jul 92 02:49:36 EDT
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics: #1006 - #1017

About using words like "deanimation": there is a fundamental problem.
In a sense we ARE a different culture. AT least we have quite different
beliefs about "death". To explain them, I see no clear way to do so 
without drawing some distinctions to which noncryonicists wouldn't
understand without long explanation. Of course, if we use the word we
should either explain it then and there or refer to another source.
About the babble on sci.cryonics: I don't subscribe but in the early days
had the repeated experience of giving talks to an unprepared audience,
which generally resulted in everyone mobbing me with questions which I
could not answer because of their number, even if given time I could 
have answered every one. In the end I wrote up my own "FAQ", CRYONICS:
A BRIEF SCIENTIFIC BIBLIOGRAPHY, which is outmoded in its discussion on
several points by now, but basically OK --- and out of print.

If Tim Freeman would like I can send him a copy. If given the time, I
should even be able to update it for him. The main point at which it
is now outmoded is the discussion of memory. I believed then and still
believe that we may actually prove the validity of cryonics not by 
reviving a person, or even an animal, but because the understanding of
how memory works has become so extensive that we need merely point to
survival of the necessary structures in a frozen brain. The BIBLIO also
contains one of the earliest discussions of repair using nanotechnology
(before the word was invented) in the biological sense. This could be
updated a little but doesn't need very much. Although it was never
formally published it was used by both Alcor and BACS through the 70's
and early 80's, and (judging from what Drexler says in his book) influenced
his thoughts on cryonics and nanotech.
				Thomas Donaldson

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