X-Message-Number: 23944 Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 09:32:41 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #23938 - #23942 Hi everyone! Some perhaps heterodox (at least for here) opinions on the 2 questions Mike Read asked in the 21 April Cryonet. 1. Total defeat of aging will be a hard problem. I think that we may well have means that will eventually be seen to double human lifespan, and used by some humans, in 50 years or less. Proof that these means do in fact double lifespan will take at least 100 years... and in practical terms, we'll have to also deal with various bogus though popular treatments which turn out NOT to work. However even doubling lifespans does not totally defeat aging, it merely pushes it off (I note that even mice calorie restricted before puberty do slowly age and die, though their aging doesn't happen in the same way as ordinary mice). I would suggest that it could take as long as 500 years to eliminate aging and know that we have done so. 2. Successful suspension, followed by the ability to bring the suspended person back to a state close to health (ie fix their heart disease or cancer, but not make them permanently young) may easily happen in less than 10 years. It may have even happened by now, though our vitrification methods are not yet perfect. We'd have to cure the suspendee's illness, too, of course, which will take varying amounts of time. The difference between developing successful means for cryonic suspension and totally defeating death is simple. If we have successful cryonic suspension, we'll be able to very quickly prove that we have it, with no questions about whether the techniques might not work on humans even though they worked on cats (suppose). Finding even a means to SLOW aging in human beings, and proving that it works, raises a problem which suspension does not have: it takes some time just to prove that a method works. (Various workers have proposed means to speed up such proof; the problem is that even if we talk of genetic similarity, human beings are among the longest-lived mammals and may already, due to simple natural selection, have gotten the same mechanisms various scientists are successfully applying to animals. Even a verifiable test for aging in humans will take some time to develop (though it would then be a valuable tool): we'd need to verify it on human subjects, which again would take some time). So, even if you're young, the most likely means to someday be able to use some method which totally defeats aging is to arrange for your cryonic suspension. Best wishes and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23944