X-Message-Number: 14465
From: 
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 13:36:29 EDT

Subject: Re: those pesky ET's, Kennita at Worldcon, and Life Extension...and web
site!

Hello everyone! Mike Donahue writing here..

It seems to me that the reason that there's no other intelligent life out 
there we can perceive is that they've progressed beyond our state and turned 
some invisible corner that we can't see yet... whether its uploading or some 
realm of quantum reality we can't imagine just yet...

otherwise, I wanted to comment on two excellent panels at the World Science 
Fiction Convention in Chicago... Kennita's panel on cryonics was well 
attended, and with a sense of excitement and not that unease of skepticism 
that used to be so common...  Many of the attendees asked particular 
questions about Cryonics procedures, and were very interested in the 
possibilities.  Good job, Kennita!  woo hoo!

Also, there was a panel on Life Extension that Ben Bova and Dr. Michael 
Fossel were on.  Dr. Fossel had never been to an SF con before.  One 
particularly funny, but telling moment was when a very excited fellow came up 
and said that they would be able to cure various forms of mental illness with 
gene therapy etc...  Dr. Fossel kind of looked around the room at large and 
the fans and commented, "Well, sometimes its not a hardware problem, 
sometimes its a software problem...!" 

LOL... Well, certainly there's a few sofware problems with our modern 
society... like the belief we have to die and that its a natural and good 
thing!

Dr. Fossel wrote a book titled "Reversing Human Aging", and is apparently 
readying a revised edition for publication.
He kinda predicts a massive social upheaval and strife when we learn to 
regenerate the aged... I spoke with him briefly after the panel, and asked 
him, "Don't you think everything will just get better?  I mean, sure, people 
will have to give up the idea of direct inheritance, and we'll have to let go 
of a few more fears and hatreds, but don't you think everything will just be 
easier and better?"   He kinda stopped and didn't quite know what to say...  
But then he kinda nodded a bit.

It was VERY encouraging to see SO MANY people at both of these panels.  Even 
SF fans used to shun this sort of thing as crackpot theorizing that made them 
look bad... so there's always hope. 

And the last thing, I found a WAY COOL website... If you all know of it, I'm 
the last to hear of it... www.grg.org.  Its a gerontology research Group site 
with all sorts of links and info on the very latest developments in 
anti-aging research.  Apparently, some company has already tested the new 
life extending anti-oxidants that were used on the worms on mice, and will 
publish their findings by the end of the year.  Who know?  Maybe that will be 
the start of true anti-aging therapies- if the anti-oxidants work on the mice 
as well as they worked on the worms!

See you all in the third- and fourth millenniums!

Mike Donahue

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