X-Message-Number: 25814
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:15:28 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: For JW Morgan and Yvan Bozzonetti

To JW Morgan:

I note that Bob Ettinger has also replied to your message about 
"natural foods" etc. 

First of all, just as Bob said, we won't know that a treatment
abolishes our aging until we live for (say) 1000 years with no
aging. Even in present terms, lots of important surgical
procedures are very hard to test because our methods keep 
advancing and patients needing them cannot be put in a group
on which statistics about success compared to no treatment or
other treatments would not be inhumane to try for, or even impossible.

So just what do you or those you quote think of tests on
animals prior to applying a treatment to humans? Since we're
not the same as rats, mice, or even monkeys, such tests won't
really answer our real question about what a treatment will
do to US. 

Tests on animals, of course, in a sense are one step below
tests on human beings. There are actually a lot of drugs and
treatments which satisfy tests on animals. And as Bob Ettinger
said, sometimes we have to make a choice for indirect reasons
which don't even include a test on animals.

So you will use this as an argument to do nothing? 

To Yvan Bozzonetti:

Basically, as an account of a neuron at one single instant of
its operation, your summary of what would be needed to model
a neuron is correct. HOWEVER there remains a basic problem:
neurons (unlike our present machines) aren't static at all,
even in adults. Memory involves the growth of new synapses,
and LTP (long term potentiation) is only the first stage in
formation of new memories. Not only that, but we also 
constantly grow new neurons.

Although nonbiological answers to this issue (growth) can be
devised theoretically, any system which implements such 
answers in practical terms quickly becomes unwieldy or even
impossible. I do not exclude the possibility that we will
work out a computer system which grows new connections and
new parts, and is not based on biology as we are.... or to
put it in other terms, has a metabolism not based on Earthly
biology but some other variety. But your account of neurons
still fails to produce systems which come close to acting
like real neurons.    

           Best wishes and long long life for all,

               Thomas Donaldson

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