X-Message-Number: 10655
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 06:34:30 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #10647 - #10649

Hi everyone!

About adjustment to the passage of 200 years: I hesitated to say this
mainly because I've said it several times on Cryonet already. But when
I worked in Australia the first time, I had an interest in anthropology,
and spent a summer vacation up in the hills of New Guinea among the
Chimbu people, whose very existence was not known until WW II.

They were much more than 200 years behind us. More like 10,000 years.
Yet they did not freak out when they saw an airplane, and very quickly
worked out that those amazingly pale human beings who came out of them
were still human beings just like them. Sure, there was a lot they 
needed to learn. But I still remember the main question I was asked
just after I set up camp near one of their villages (doing so actually
IN the village would be just as much a NONO as if someone came and
decided to set up camp on your front lawn). I was asked about the
moon landing. And so I tried, in a simple way, to explain about the
moon landing. (This was in Jan 1970). 

Yes, they did have one another as companions. But then does anyone on
Cryonet believe they will be the ONLY revival from the 20th Century
(or the early part of the 21st)? And yes, they misunderstood a lot,
at the beginning. The first thing they looked for in the airplace
was its genitals (they weren't used to people being able to actually
build something like that, so they thought at first that it was some
kind of animal). If you put yourself in their position, that hypothesis
was entirely logical. Wrong, but logical. 

I think that the idea that a high proportion of people, awakened after
a suspension of 200 years, would find it hard to adjust to the new
world in which they then lived is a total and utter furphy. Yes, it's
the responses of the Chimbu which convinced me quite firmly of that.
The major difference is that the Chimbu (human beings) were confronted
with something REAL, not a set of myths or odd (to them) claims. And
almost all human beings have an ability to adjust very quickly to
something REAL standing right in front of them. Denying reality just
hasn't had much survival value when it shows itself so plainly, and
those who did deny have died out millenia ago. Not only that, but
we're speaking of ONLY 200 YEARS. Even the English language will not
become unintelligible after only 200 years. Not only that, but it 
will be easy to find buildings older than that and organizations
older than that (especially cryonics societies!). 

To Jan Coetzee: Yes, but that is a quite insufficient explanation
when you get down to asking about the molecular biology of it. And
to be satisfied with "interference with the developmental program"
when you see the effects of CR is a refusal to ask such questions,
not a placid belief that their answers are known. Exactly how does
it interfere with the developmental program in terms of the genes
and biomolecules involved? Can we piece out which genes are involved,
to start with? One notion about the molecular biology of aging is
that the ends of our chromosomes (which contain special noncoding
and repeating regions) are gradually lost after cell division. 
(It's far fromclear this is the whole story, but I bring it up
tto discuss the detailed questions which need to be asked). So OK,
if this theory is true then does CR somehow slow down the loss
of these chromosome ends? Again, some strains of animals have been
bred (and in human beings this happens too) in which aging seems
to take place faster. What happens if these animals are subjected
to CR (the point is, we know the genes implicated in these animals).

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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