X-Message-Number: 16566
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 15:15:12 +0000 ()
From: Louis Epstein <>
Subject: Replies to CryoNet #16555 - #16560,etc

On 17 Jun 2001, CryoNet wrote:

> ----------------------------------------------------
> Message #16555 Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 11:33:42 -0500
> From: "www.IGGY.net - KC Homes" <>
> 
> A couple of weeks ago, one of major US TV Network News Magazine
> (60 minutes of[sic] 20/20) had a piece on longevity and how several people
> were accomplishing it: Nick Nolte, a 103 years old doctor, a housewife,
> etc.
> 
> I was mostly impressed by the way Nick Nolte was pursuing a rather
> interesting combination of organic fruits & veggies, multivitamins,
> supplements, and exercise. It seemed that the report put an emphasis on
> supplements and NN's belief in them. The piece also highlighted kind of a
> "maverick," "what do I have to loose" approach Nick Nolte has to living
> longer and having absolutely no reservations about his desire to do so. It,
> however, stopped short of NN saying "If there was a chance or hope to, I'd
> live forever" :o), but the underlying theme was there.

Hence I don't see a need to
draw a line between LEF customers
and immortalists.(Not that I am
sure supplements do what they're
touted to,though I take antioxidants
and multivitamins fairly often.
"Pop these pills for 120 years
and you'll live 120 years" is
a rather tautological selling
point).If you want to go on
living,you're not interested in
dying.

> I guess, what I am wondering about is this. There are celebrities out there,
> who have the money, ego, desire, and wish to live longer, stay healthier and
> do use unconventional means of pursuing it. Many of them don't care too much
> about what the others think about their way of life, because, this is the
> way the "celeb" subculture is. Some may pursue a "normal" lifestyle, while
> their personal life may be a 180 turnaround to that.  If any one of them
> were exposed to the idea of cryonics, had been explained the potential in a
> logical, reasonable and non confrontational way, I am positive that this
> idea would be embraced by at least some. At least, Tae-bo has been :o) by
> many a celebrity.

So you want to get Dara Torres
to do a cryonics infomercial?
She's already set records for
world's oldest Olympic swimming
medal winner,I think.Not sure if
she's gone back to Tae-bo.

> This goes towards a spiritual development as well (e.g.
> John Travolta - Scientology, Madonna - Cabbala, etc). These people have the
> means, clout and fame to bring additional insights into an idea. Most
> importantly, they are not afraid to go against the conventional. And if they
> do, most people will take it for granted that they (celebs) can just do it.
> This would not hurt either way, the more people know, the more chances are
> they can make an informed decision.
> 
> I am positive, that among membership of any cryonics organization, people
> who have certain professional, educational, political, and financial status
> have a higher representation (doctors, computer people, lawyers, musicians,
> authors, creative people, etc). Unfortunately, I don't have the hard core
> numbers, but common sense just makes me believe that these people by nature
> will be more exposed to new ideas and more willing to embrace them, thus
> allowing for more exposure to cryonics.

It's my understanding that people
of this type who do affiliate with
cryonics organizations value the
organizations' commitment to
member confidentiality.Being
affiliated with something unusual
(especially Alcor and its frozen
heads) may be bad for their carefully
tended images.

The only rich person who has made a
public commitment to cryonics in the
past,that I know of,is Don Laughlin,
the Nevada gambling tycoon who has a
town named after him.He has not been
as visible as he was before the
Alcor/Cryocare split,I don't know
if he has cancelled.

This doesn't mean no other rich person
has enrolled.Perhaps someday we'll
hear that some multimillionaire has
died and been frozen,and that Alcor
or CI suddenly has lots of additional
money.But the person doesn't want it
known now,and has committed to it 
because it won't be known until then.

> In light of low exposure that cryonics has to the world, has there been any
> concentrated effort to contact celebrities (athletes, actors, authors, CEOs
> of major corporations, prominent scientists, politicians, news people, etc)
> about cryonics? There are some highly visible people (British astronomer
> Steven Hawkings, Superman actor Christopher Reeve) who are disabled, have
> money, contribute extensively to charities, disease research, etc. Are they
> aware that such thing as cryonics exists? If they are exposed to it, is it
> possible that they may see the enormous potential there is in it? If this
> happens will they support it and may act as a "poster child" for the cause?
> I hope you get the idea.
> 
> I was watching Jay Leno the other day and thought - why do all studios want
> their actors on these shows to promote their movies? The answer is exposure,
> a rather laid back approach that actors take when pushing the movie. You
> expect this from a celebrity, it would be strange if they wouldn't :o) -
> because, this is just the way things are.

I don't think that the existence of
cryonics is in any way secret.I mean,
from H.G. Wells's "When the Sleeper
Wakes" and Laurence Manning's "The Man 
Who Awoke" and others,suspended animation
has been a known concept to readers.
The freezing of those who die has been
widely known enough for the urban
legend to accrete around Disney.

In reading Cryonet archives every so
often someone suggests marketing to
high-profile people to raise the
profile of cryonics.No success has
come of this,the highest profile
case being Timothy Leary,who backed
out and got his ashes taken into space
instead.The "FM-2030" neurosuspension
did make the national wires last year;
other than that,the main news media
exposure cryonics has had has been the
Dora Kent case years previously,again
with the grisly decapitation aspect
prominent.

(I am not sure why Leary couldn't
have it both ways,if he wanted to
be a neuro...not sure if his Cryocare
arrangements were for neuro.He could
have his head frozen,and his body
cremated/launched!)

> Just a marketer talking in me. In my real estate career direct mail,
> face-to-face, and personal referrals has been the most effective to drum up
> my real estate business. I don't see any reason why the same should not work
> for cryonics. I am getting mail solicitations from a local Baptist church,
> also Church of Scientology mails to me every now and then, why not Cryonics?

I think the Omni contest was the closest
approach that has been made to mass-marketing
cryonics,and you can see from the recent
post from Charles Platt how successful
that was...
 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Message #16557 From: "George Smith" <>
> Subject: Medical Implant device for monitoring life and location?
> 
> Unless this is actually a hoax (wiser minds are asked to validate,
> please) it would seem that we may soon have the capability of having
> worldwide monitoring available to be certain our cryonics members are
> (1) alive and (2) findable.
> 
> This company purports to have a device to implant which can be tracked
> by GPS technology to know where you are and how you are doing (heart
> rate, etc.).
> 
> My CATS have a subdermal implant so that if they are lost any animal
> shelter in the country can scan their skin and get a read out on their
> owner's identity (me) so that I can recover them.
> 
> When I had those implants injected into my cats, I telephoned the
> implant company and asked if this could be made available for myself and
> members of my family instead of relying upon medical bracelets (which
> can come off after all).  
> 
> The strange man who answered the telephone actually began to quote to
> me from the Bible about why such an idea for humans was dreadful.  So
> today my cats are findable if lost but my human family members are only
> safe from Satan!  (Hoorah!  Who cares?).

I have to say that an implanted
locator-transmitter is something
I'd flee from.It's a great loss
of privacy and invasion of
the body.Perhaps it might make
sense as a sentence for a crime,
but being unable to keep your
whereabouts to yourself is not
something that will appeal to
many!

Of course,I also recoil from
piercings,tattoos,etc...perhaps
the people more amenable to
such things might be more
open to Big Brother having a
line on them at all times.
 
>  http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17834
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------- 
> Message #16558 Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 17:40:23 -0500
> From: david pizer <>
> 
> Constructing an argument for support of cryonic suspension.
> 
> This is not an easy task in my opinion, because cryonics has been around so
> long and yet there are so few signed up.  Something is wrong.  Myself, I
> was easily persuaded by just reading a brief article (that was intended to
> poke fun at it), in the newspaper about 20 years ago, and further persuaded
> by the well-done arguments in  "The Prospect of Immortality."  But now
> after being around so long, these things do not seem to be persuading too
> many others.  We need to try to improve.

I take it Ettinger's books and
others will be readily available
in VentureVille.Will PROSPECT
OF IMMORTALITY be beside every
Gideon Bible in the resort,the
way J.W. Marriott's biography
is in every Marriott hotel?
 
> It seems that some of the basic premises of this new and powerful argument
> must address:
> 1.	Why life is valuable to live;
> 2.	Why biological immortality is apt to come along soon;
> 3.	Why cryonics might provide a vehicle to that future time.
> 4.	Why the future will be a great place to be.
> 
> Each premise is very complicated and it can be a small argument on the way
> to combining all four.
> 
>  The first premise, why life is valuable to live, must show why life is
> valuable to live as an end, and not merely as a means to some other end.

Anybody who doesn't believe the first
premise wants to die.I think that you
can make people face this,and admit
that they don't look forward to death.
 
> To have the maximum convincing power the argument must start with
> rock-solid assumptions.  The kind of starting place Descartes started with.

Well,the atheists still try to
paint the ontological argument
for the existence of God as
"discredited".

> I realize that certain scientific developments to increase the odds of
> cryonics working do not exist yet.  This argument has to convince without
> those advancements being achieved yet, as that is the position we are in at
> this time.  The sooner many people realize there is a viable prospect for
> immortality, and that immortality is worth achieving, the sooner more
> people will put resources into this movement and therefore, the sooner this
> goal can be achieved. 

Selling cryonics based on these arguments
involves both optimistic and pessimistic
assumptions.You want them to believe that
science can prevent us from dying,but that
it can not be expected to happen during our
otherwise-natural lifetimes and we therefore
have to resort to cryosuspension as a means
of existing long enough to reap the benefits
of these advances.

The viability of these arguments may depend
on the listener's age and health.The longer
people think they can last without cryonics,
the less they'll think they need it to get
to a future paradise.Of course you can point
to people who die young(like Kim Walker) or
die suddenly(like Cardinal Winning),but I
am not sure how well reminders that there
are risks to doing without will help convince
people to go with.

And of course some may become more minded to
support non-cryonic immortalist research in
response to persuasion of the attainability
of immortality.Never forget,it's those fixes
for death that make thawing cryonic patients
a possibility.

> ------------------------------------
> Message #16560 From: 
> Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 01:13:04 EDT
> 
> adenocarcinomas (the common major lethal cancers like those of the lung, 
> breast, colon and skin) show only modestly increased rates of cell division 
> over those present in normal tissue. 
> 
> The most aggressive cancers combine up-regulated cell division and defective 
> apoptosis with activation of genes promoting angiogenisis (new blood vessel 
> formation), metastasis (invasive colonization of tissues in multiple 
> locations in the host) and resistance to normal immune surveillance. 
> Activation of apoptosis in cancer cells is a promising line of therapy and 
> will probably reach the clinic within the next 3-5 years.
 
It's worth noting that the adenocarcinomas 
seem to respond markedly to the recently
announced London research that combines
a drug from the African bush willow with
radioactive antibodies...the drug stops
angiogenesis inside the tumor and the
radiotherapy prevents the outside from
getting blood supplies.85% of the mice
involved became cancer free and remained
so.


The most recent celebrated person to join the
ranks of the deceased is Cardinal Winning,the
Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow.He seemed to
be recovering fine from a heart attack,then
apparently had another.Born 1925,he had been
Archbishop since 1974,later becoming Scotland's
and then the United Kingdom's senior Catholic
hierarch.

I don't think the RC Church has canons for
dealing with frozen bishops.

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