X-Message-Number: 18394
From: "Tim Freeman" <>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 07:06:27 -0700
Subject: Hurry up with James Swayze Fund donations.  His situation is complex.

Modern medicine is fairly good at dealing with individual problems.
I've only been close enough to two deaths to understand in detail how
they happened, and in each case at the end the person had multiple
problems, and death was brought on by unforseen interactions rather
than by being crushed totally by one of the problems.

James Swayze's situation is complicated.  He hasn't talked publicly
about his medical problems, so I won't, but I can say that there are
enough potentially interacting problems that it doesn't make sense to
hang back and hope that other people donate to his suspension fund
first.  There is time for checks to clear and paperwork to be filled
out, probably.

There is a semi-rational basis for deciding how much to donate.  The
assumption is that you want to be a typical part of a fund-raising
effort that gets Swayze's suspension funded.  For an
order-of-magnitude computation, a CI suspension costs roughly $30,000.
Thus:

A $100 donation is a typical part of solving the problem if there
are 300 people doing it.  No way in hell.  There are fewer than 300
people aware of the issue, and much fewer than 300 people who care and
are able and willing to donate.

A $1,000 donation is a typical part of solving the problem if 30
people do it.  30 is a high but plausible number.  

A $3,000 donation is a typical part of solving the problem if 10
people do it.  This number feels right to me.

A $10,000 donation basically solves the problem, given the other
donations I've heard of.

I sent $5,000, routing it through the Venturists so it's tax
deductible.  Checks should go to:

   Society for Venturism, c/o Mike Perry
   7895 E. Acoma Dr. Ste. 110
   Scottsdale, AZ 85260-6916

Make the check payable to "Society for Venturism" and mark it
"Cryonics Assistance Fund."

If Swayze doesn't get suspended, it will be a different kind of
failure from most of the ones I've heard of.  Usually the situation is
one of these:

* Someone wants it for someone else (and the someone else is
  indifferent or nearly dead or dead).  In this scenario, failure
  is caused by the overhead inherent in manipulating someone else.
* Someone wants it for themselves but their behavior shows they don't
  want it much.  In this scenario, failure is caused by insufficient
  resources devoted to the task.  Usually a perceived lack of money
  falls into this category.
* Someone doesn't want it, so it doesn't happen.

Swayze's situation is that he wants it but he has a legitimate story
behind the lack of money.  Only paupers are eligible for the free
medical care that the government provides in the US, and he definitely
needs that free medical care.  Hence if he doesn't make it, it can
only be attributed to very bad luck (and stupid laws, which are also
bad luck).  Surely this has happened before, but I have not personally
heard the story.

-- 
Tim Freeman       
; formerly 

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