X-Message-Number: 10987 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #10962 - #10967 Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 22:02:03 +1100 (EST) Hi everyone! To Daniel Crevier: Thanks for the good word. I will add something else about term insurance for cryonics. The general idea behind it is that you take out the term insurance when you are young, and then use the extra money (which you would otherwise have paid for whole life) in a savings program aimed at saving enough money for suspension by a given date. IF all goes well, then your insurance would not fund your suspension anyway. If all does not go well, then the reasons why insurance companies would still pay up still hold. To Keith Dugue: As I understand it, 21st Century Medicine is aiming towards a quite different process than freezing. It's called "vitrification", which is exactly what happens to glass. The interest of vitrification is exactly that the strains involved in freezing do not happen. I'll add, though, that when we consider vitrifying brains, we're not considering anything which has yet been proven by experiment. The possibility of fracture may still arise, even if it now looks unlikely. Finally, the problem of repairing brain damage has already received a great deal of scientific attention outside cryonics. Even if vitrification still involves cracks, it will probably involve fewer cracks, and we (collectively) are coming close to a time when many brain injuries will become repairable. Whether you want to call present methods of brain and spinal cord repair "nanotechnology" depends a lot on just what you mean by nanotechnology, but they already exist and have had some success in animals. Clearly we'll need to do much more, but then this is not a subject which has been worked on enough that anyone doing it claims that it's exhausted. (Basically it's been found that neurons, either grown separately or from some areas of tissue in our skull, can move to those places needed when implanted in an injured brain. It's not that neurons divide, it's that there are special areas which even in adults generate new neurons. Yes, this is contrary to what virtually all neuroscientists thought only 30 years ago). Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10987