X-Message-Number: 23846
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 07:50:12 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #23664 - #23671

Hi everyone! and I know that this reply to Ettinger's message on
Cryonet for 19 March (Message  23666) is late, but I think it needs
a significant addition:

The context was an answer to a "Christopher" who wondered about the
status of a revived cryonics patient. I would add that not only 
are there altruists willing to revive someone for free, but as a 
member of a cryonics society when you are revived you will have a 
large number of people to care for you: the existing cryonics society
which revived you, plus all those who had been revived before you.
(And even if you're the first one revived, that status alone would
mean that you'd have people caring for you).

Yes, the long term preservation of people for whom we don't know how
to cure their illness (ie. basically, cryonics, whether or not 200
years from now they even use low temperatures) just will not go 
away once its been established. The number of events that could kill
us (as individuals) will never go to ZERO; many of these will be
forms of damage that at the time they happen the people of that
time won't know how to treat. We simply won't wake up to a lovely
world in which everyone is dancing and wearing flowers, free of
all care. Every one of those conditions, most of which don't even
exist now (medical problems change with time: no one worried 
about Alzheimer's when most people only lived to the old age of 50)
will need some way to store affected patients.

And I'll say a bit more about the fate of cryonics, itself, too:
we've already seen some cryonics societies fail. Even if ALL 
cryonics societies existing now fail, and we all end up dying
needlessly, the idea is not one that will go away. Life insurance
had a hard time getting established in the US, but the basic idea
of life insurance wasn't one that would disappear, and eventually
it took hold, to give us the many life insurance co's we see 
now. I would hardly hope that existing cryonics societies go out
of existence (except by being superseded by other better ones!),
but we still have an idea that will not be defeated long term.

             Best wishes and long long life for all,

                   Thomas Donaldson

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