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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12661