X-Message-Number: 11389 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: A Clarification, for Mike Perry Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 00:23:04 +1100 (EST) Hi everyone! To Mike Perry: I should have been more specific as to the kind of changes I was referring to. Naturally we want to bring patients back to full physical health. As for mental health, there is a problem: many mental conditions come from genes which also produce other GOOD things. The major case of that is a tendency to depression or manic-depression: there are significantly more creative people (artists, writers, etc) with a tendency to manic-depression than the normal rate. To take someone who suffers from manic-depression and cure them of their condition without consulting them might well result in some anger at what was done. Clearly some brain conditions are very physical: I now lack some brain areas, and this has affected my abilities (very thankfully, mostly my physical abilities!). That kind of lack of health should clearly be fixed. The same may be said of conditions such as Alzheimer's or any of the other many different brain conditions. To take manic-depression as an example (yes, this may pertain to the man who was suicidal, too) we may someday work out means to get the creativity without the depression. That would be good. But anyone who has been revived and suffered from manic-depression before should not be automatically modified. They should be shown the choice, not just briefly but with full information, and allowed to choose for themselves whether or not they want their manic-depression to be removed. My own strong suspicion is that as we learn more about various mental (and sometimes even physical) conditions we will learn not just of their disadvantages, but that they associate with serious ADVANTAGES also. There is an easy test to suggest that: most completely negative genes cannot maintain themselves in a population. But when a gene has both positive and negative effects, it may persist at a low level for centuries. In terms of redesign, we need to work out how to change ourselves so that we get the good but not the bad. Color "blindness", for instance, has some advantages: color blind people turn out to be very useful in that they can see things which are camouflaged to those who are not color blind. Perhaps we can make a genetic modification which allows us to turn color blindness on or off, and even vary it into spectral sensitivities which have not yet been shown by any human being. (Yes, the trait of a gene in maintaining itself has now begun to depend not just on natural selection but on our own control of genes, but if anything this tells me that we should study carefully what has happened to people with gene X in the past). And because some are going to immediately raise the possibility of becoming computers "with bodies", I will point out that the basic issues involved here are hardly unique to biology. Any engineer knows that he cannot make anything to have the highest abilities in every respect: design consists of making choices. To anyone living in California, this should be very clear: sure, we can make our skyscrapers strong enough to survive ANY given strength of earthquake, but by doing so we not only make them less habitable but also more expensive. So choices must be made. (As for myself, I think that the line between biology and computers, robots and living things, will become so blurred in the future that no one would think the advantages of one over the other were clear at all. After all, we do want immortality, and one way our body helps our survival now is by its ability at self-repair. To my knowledge, no computer now in existence or even envisioned has similar abilities. And our control of biology will become as great as our control of electronics, too). When I was stating that we should allow patients to choose for themselves, I meant primarily their mental and emotional (very linked!) traits, both "good" and "bad"... so long as those traits were not ALREADY KNOWN as diseases with NO mitigating factors at the time of the patient's suspension. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11389