X-Message-Number: 18830 Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 03:45:09 -0800 From: James Bryan Swayze <> Subject: Late reply to Toby References: <> Toby, First let me apologize for my tardiness in responding to your post. I had company for most of the past week. It was my cousin, a young man that I have mentored since early teenage years. He's very intelligent and when I met him he was having trouble in school not getting along with other classmates and being a little bit depressed for standing out and from being bored from not being challenged. My family asked me to take him under my wing because they regard me as having above average intelligence like he and knew that I had some of the same problems in school. When he comes to stay I get little done because we spend most of our time even into late hours of the night playing video games and discussing lofty issues such as creationism vs. evolution and more and even cryonics. I'm happy to say he has adopted a rationalists point of view and agreed to sign up for cryonics when able to. Now to your post below. > Message #18810what every desert do one of their > From: "Toby Christensen" <> > Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 12:45:31 +0800 > Subject: Attention James Swayze... > > James, > > I think it is obvious that cryonics needs disabled people like you and I signing up. It's the most obvious use for cryonics. > Most if not all of us here do also Toby. The way I see it the public will become more friendly with our position once they notice more and more that it is now routine that heart and brain surgery patients are brought back from flat line, death by any modern definition, having deliberately had their body temperature lowered to hypothermia temperatures. This is certainly not as cold is we place ourselves, however, the connection should be made by the public that the definition of death is not so concrete. Once they make this inference it should not be a huge leap for the public to realize that death can be put *on hold*, so to speak. Something else that will help is that there are two doctors, whose names fail me right now, that are trying to push forward the idea that the golden hour of trauma can be extended by lowering temperatures of trauma victims to hypothermia temperatures. Their proposition is viable. Once this becomes common the public should see the connection to cryonics or rather, if we paint it so, *suspended animation* very readily. I know that to the veterans here cold water drownings and snow bank mishaps that result in people being revived, from again the modern definition of death, are old hat but I feel these stories are very powerful to the public at large. To them the connection from these extreme cold mishaps to deliberate hypothermia surgery to suspended animation/cryonics is a straight line of logic. The issue talked about here of late about contentious coroners and medical examiners worries me greatly. I feel we need to be seen more as suspended animation to halt degradation then as a way to cheat death. Cheating death is obviously the logical outcome but directly treating cryonics so puts many people off. However, these same people would have no problem with a heart or brain surgeon lowering a patients temperature until clinical death occurs with the said patient routinely being resurrected to life again. If the doctors mentioned above have their way then these same people will accept without so much as a blink EMT's injecting cryo fluids into people suffering trauma in order to extend their prospects for recovery by putting on hold the bodies slip into death. It will be saving their life, not so much cheating death even though they are one and the same. If it is a "medical" procedure people accept almost unquestioningly anything new that saves lives. We need for cryonics to be more aligned with medicine. We need more doctors in mainstream medicine to join our ranks. Nearly every time I ask a doctor or nurse or physician's assistant if they know what cryonics is, especially the older ones, the answer is no, they've never heard of it. I find it simply incredible! Perhaps they are lying so to avoid discussing something they see as quackery or likely to drag them into what they percive as a personally risky situation. Doctors are very gun shy of medical malpractice. Perhaps this is the reason seemingly so few bother to learn about it. My primary doctor fortunately is aware and respects usually whatever I bring to him as my wish for my care. He has allowed me to direct my care but others in the past have resented my involvement and my knowledge of my situation.... my staying informed about my options. I think the internet is making more people informed and more willing to challenge their doctor's advice. I'm not sure how the medical profession feels about this but I see it as a good thing. We need for suspended animation/cryonics to be something people find as one of the options that save lives while searching their options at say "WebMD" and the like. This is a medical procedure and we need to portray it so. Sure it is experimental but hasn't every new medical procedure required a human being to be a guinea pig at some point in it's development? Imagine the sweaty palms when the first human patient was taken down in temperature so low thier pulse and brain waves stopped. > > Our circumstances are very different, you and I, but the basic message is the same; cryonics presents a beautiful opportunity for people like me (brain injury), you (quadraplegia) and the numerous other afflictions that millions face. I feel this is true and is my prime reason for getting involved. I saw cures coming in the near future but maybe not near enough for me due to my unstable health. I needed a way to slow my slide towards oblivion so I could take part in cures for diabetes, Heterotrophic ossification, spinal injury and paralysis and muscle atrophy. Only with all these could I get back to a full life a "far go" as you put it. Fortunately serendipity led me to cryonet. It's an interesting tale I will save for another time. > > To have more disabled people in cryonics is to, I believe, level the playing field a lot more. If more disabled people are able to access cryonics, this will be one of the greatest PR triumphs cryonics could ever hope for, because it brings the Australian concept of a "fair go". I certainly hope my involvement will bring even more publicity than it has already. I'm always ready and willing to utilize any opportunity that is appropriate. In fact I've just had a idea. I once appeared on a local television show with a local CBS affiliate for their "Town Hall Show" representing the pro position on cloning around the time of Dolly's introduction. With the Martinot issue in the press perhaps I could persuade them to do a story on cryonics. Having footage of me already will be useful for indicating my civility and ability to discuss the issue. I will try to contact them this week. > > Could we really say that to have a twisted, palsied, drooling wreck, worse off than myself and certainly worse than a "normal" person, go to their grave after a lifetime of disability was fair? Absolutely not! > > When I asked my stepdad why disabled people were put in their graves after not getting "a fair go", (he is utterly opposed to cryonics), he replied "Because that's life!" I'm sad to hear your stepfather is against this. Is this a religious conviction or perhaps he feels it's a waste of money? If religious I have some bible passages for you to help with your argument. Would he impede your efforts? Do you have the ability to work enough to earn enough for a life insurance policy? Would your affliction preclude you from getting a life insurance policy? > So I put out the clarion call to all disabled people out there, not just myself and Swayze, to endeavour to get ourselves frozen and thereby get a fair go. I'm with you there. I have just one more question though. You mentioned a little depression. I too have suffered "situational" rather than "clinical" depression. So I'm concerned by your email address. Is "morose" an acronym or do you mean to say morose as in how Merriam Webster's dictionary puts it 1 : having a sullen and gloomy disposition 2 : marked by or expressive of gloom? Recently I chastised my twin teenage second cousins for using the phrase "Chillin like a villain". I said one day, "What are you up to?" They each replied "I'm chillin like a villain". I thought about how it grated on my nerves and later explained to them my semantics theory of "garbage in equals garbage out". In short I feel that negative media, even the apocalyptic portions of the bible, are negatively influential to us on a subconscious level. We often hold dialogue with ourselves when we cogitate. If this inner language is full of negative language, I feel, it can only effect us negatively. Soon we begin to believe this inner dialogue and I feel work subconsciously to effect in reality the outcome represented by the language. In the case of the bible people expect nay hope for a climactic end to the world and I believe will in whatever way available to them work toward that result without perhaps even consciously being aware of it. In the case of my cousins I pointed out that their minds did a little short hand with their "I'm CHILLIN LIKE a villain" to end up being instead "I'm A villain". Wouldn't you know it but one was soon in trouble with the authorities. So Toby I hope your address means something other than the word morose. Sincerely, James -- My website: http://www.davidpascal.com/swayze A collection of photos of me and some of my artwork: http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4292752723&code=2039335&mode=invite A radio interview on Dr. J's ChangeSurfer Radio program with me and the father of cryonics Prof. Robert Ettinger, author of "The Prospect of Immortality": http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=3728 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18830