X-Message-Number: 1458
Date: 16 Dec 92 22:28:26 EST
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics: #1450 - #1455

Some comments, again in inverse order:
To David Stodolsky: Yes, the Vatican is a state. But it has a very small
population while the majority of Roman Catholics live very far from it.
Although RC is very influential politically in a variety of places, 
there is no place but in the Vatican where it actually has any state 
power (as shown by the wave of conversions to Protestantism in many
Latin American countries, for instance).

My problem with states is that because the set the law, they may have
(except for the democratic ones, and there are problems even there!)
power to do whatever they wish, with no or little feedback.

Re Steve Harris's comment: I was most interested by the Gompertz curve
papers because, first, they proved what people have guessed to be true
for years (ie. proved it statistically) and second, they strongly 
suggest to me (at least) that there are only a small number of changes
which cut down the repair ability of aging people to the low level we
see at age 90. (There are other suggestions to this effect also, but
these experiments add one more the the list). Apparently there is to be
another, larger, trial of HGH in human subjects: despite the fact that
its authors are telling all and sundry that they really don't want
immortality, they're just trying to make people live in good health
until age 85 etc etc, there is a suggestion (from results like these on
the Gompertz curve) that HGH may do much more than that.

Re Scott Herman's comments: I think he should review what Metzgar had
to say. And as I said to him before, if all the nonpoliticians leave
Alcor, it will consist only of politicians. It's one thing to stop
your volunteer activity and another to resign outright. I myself became
active shortly after I finished grad school ... not because I thought 
that any existing organization (it was the time of CSC, for instance) 
would save me, but because it seeped into my highly nonpolitical skull
that if I didn't do something personally about my own suspension I
would not be suspended decades later ... And I DO mean decades. Even
if Alcor has 342 members, that's a drop in the ocean. It can't even
support minor amounts of scientific research, not to mention the 
millions of dollars and man-hours likely to be needed to make suspension
even theoretically secure... and millions of dollars and man-hours 
would still be needed to establish that as actually secure.

			Best
				Thomas Donaldson

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