X-Message-Number: 16319
Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 20:54:10 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: The Logic of Cryonics

Eugene Leitl wrote in Cryonet #16306

>The lesson from the past decade in cryonics appears rather dismal. Not
>only is the product intrinsically difficult to sell, it is technically
>demanding, and under current framing conditions difficult to deploy in the
>field, especially rapidly (when little forewarning if any is given) and

>with adequate geographic coverage.

This is hardly news.  People very experienced in marketing and
publicity would have predicted it.  Under the circumstances,
miracles have been and continue to be wrought.

>As a result, criminally negligent service providers continue to exist...

This unbelievably exaggerated view makes me wonder what historical
enterprises Eugene Leitl would not have said the same about:  what
would he have made of Columbus's journeys?  Death rate:  high.
Soviet (and American) efforts to put men into space?  Death rate:
very high.  Colonization of a new continent?  Death rate: unbelievably
high, often past fifty per cent.  And yet for each of those enterprises,
alternatives **existed**!  Any participant in any of those endeavors
could have bailed out.  But unlike them, we have no choice.  As yet, we
cannot bail out of cryonics, without paying the price of certain death.

But to characterize leaders of the cryonics movement as criminally
negligent is beyond the pale.  Only the paranoid, or the reality
challenged, view technical disagreements as deliberately evil.  As
I'm sure that Eugene Leitl is none of these, the above remarks can
only be attributed to anger or resentment.

>Reluctantly, I've decided to take the... consequences and for
>time being am going to stop participation in all cryonics-related
>activities, whether at the service or the client side.

Perhaps this was said in a moment of exasperation.  When all is done
and said, the important thing is saving lives.  Your life, Eugene
Leitl, might very well be lost by this hasty decision.  On reflection,
perhaps logic will seize you by the throat and force you to
reconsider:  until 

>mainstream medicine eventually realize[s] the feasibility of
>reversible cryosuspension using the emerging techniques of bulk
>molecular-scale imaging and reconstruction...

...until then, deanimation means death forever for you.  What's
at stake here that can compare with that?

>If this does not occur, or I happen to die before, so be it.

Again!  What could be at stake here that can justify that?


>Apart from that dangling end, I'm almost out of here. I hope
>you all make it.

I hope that you make it too, Eugene.  One way or the other.

Lee Corbin

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