X-Message-Number: 29662 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> Subject: Re: newsweek on low temps to save heart attack vics Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:55:13 +0100 > I can't help but wonder if the reason doctors have had such a hard time > accepting it, is because of the low opinion of cryonics and the connection > in their minds between hypothermia and cryonics. > > It is an absolute disgrace that the benefits of hypothermia have been > known for so long and yet hospitals are still not using it to save lives. I would have thought that the real reason it has not been taken up is that the procedures in hospitals, whether state run or privately run, are geared around appointments and waiting lists. Anything that has to be applied immediately creates big problems for the smooth running of these institutions. Admittedly there are a few categories of admission when immediate action is applied, but if the "few" becomes "many" then chaos could result. Other authority organisations such as policing and imprisonment are meeting similar problems. Crimes that the public want solving, such has house burglary, require immediate action for a successful resolution but they are not getting it. Instead priority is given to other crimes whose solution is less popular but the government deems more important. (Government may even be right, this is not the point here. This is about the application of priorities.) In the UK prisons are so drastically overcrowded that there are periodic crises. Solutions are being found such as controversial early release schemes which are proving very unpopular with the law abiding public. In some countries people incarcerated for minor offences have to be put on a waiting list to serve their time. Although the "capitalist system" is the most efficient known, it has its drawbacks, and one is the fact that professions evolve to maximise fee income for the profession as a whole as opposed to evolving to maximise patient or client care. However caring and honourable some individual practitioners can be, this force of evolution is very hard to control. [Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene] A well ordered system of short appointments will tend to maximise income and therefore be preferred. If service users have to "pop back to the office" several times where once would do, very often the time of the practitioner can be used more efficiently. To make it very clear, I am not saying the people sit round a table and discuss ways to maximise income at the expense of the service. The process is far more subtle than that. Nevertheless, individual professionals can the thrown out of a practise because they are not generating enough fee income, not because they are failing to give good service to their service users. The world is as it is, not as we would like it to be. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29662