X-Message-Number: 1244
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 00:59:33 CDT
From: Brian Wowk <>
Subject: CRYONICS: Future need for cryonics

Keith Henson:
 
> BTW, I could well be wrong, but my best guess is that far fewer than 
> 10,000 patients will be suspended before they start being revived, and 
> the practice of cryonics is relegated to the history books.  (Arel's 
> estimate is fewer than 500.)
 
        I think this is completely unrealistic.  At present growth rates 
one can conservatively project 500 people in suspension near the turn of 
the century, and 10,000 people in suspension by the year 2010.  Are you 
suggesting that there will be no terminal illnesses left in 20 years?
 
        What about that last great frontier of terminal illnesses?  I 
refer not to aging, but to something even worse: cerebral ischemic 
injury.  In the United States alone over 100,000 people every year 
suffer cardiac arrest in sudden, uncontrolled circumstances resulting in 
hours of warm ischemic injury.  This is the kind of injury that only 
*mature* nanotechnology has any hope of fixing.  I for one do not expect 
to see this level of nanotechnology inside of a hundred years.
 
        Cerebral ischemic injury may be an extreme example, yet it alone 
is sufficient to insure a continuing need for cryonic suspension deep 
into the 21st century.  The number of patients in suspension will 
probably peak in the millions, not thousands.
 
                                                --- Brian Wowk     

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