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

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