X-Message-Number: 12661
From: 
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 07:54:19 EDT
Subject: Why pessimism

Thank you, Saul. Hope to see  front page in the New York Times with "Rabbit 
kidney frozen, transplanted"  headline sometime next year.-:).

Mike Perry wrote (Message #12659):
>But beyond this, the development of demonstrated, reversible
>cryopreservation would, I think, trigger a paradigm shift in world thinking
>that is hard to imagine. It might take a little while to take effect, but
>the effect would be profound, with death no longer the "finality" it has
>been seen as since time immemorial, but instead something under human
>control. The legal repercussions alone would be immense. Failing to
>cryopreserve preserve the dying could be recognized as a form of murder, as
>it would be.

No, it won't. Successful brain cryopreservation may just help somewhat in the 
eyes of medical community. 
Vitrification is really just the first step. Assuming some aged, likely 
diseased brain cryopreserved even without  serious damage, the next steps are 
FAR more daunting. The brain must be repaired/transplanted/downloaded. And 
while there are countless speculations on how this can be done, all of them 
have one thing in common: they cannot currently be verified. Cryonics thus 
will remain unproven procedure in the eyes of FDA and medical community at 
large. This situation is likely to persist for decades, and not much we can 
do about this fundamental uncertainty. Not exactly religion, "Hamburger to 
cow" anymore, but not a proven science/technology either. As Mike Darwin 
says, "Shades of gray".

Desire for certainty may be rooted in a human nature. We want to believe that 
if we do things right, we'll be rewarded. Lets face it: we're not likely to 
know this for sure in case of cryonics, and we have to live with uncertainty.

Alex Berg

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