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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1244