X-Message-Number: 3042 Date: Wed, 31 Aug 1994 17:49:40 MST From: "Richard Schroeppel" <> Subject: CRYONICS: Money for research Charles Platt remarks > Paul Wakfer has suggested that for $5 million in research, we could have reversible brain cryopreservation. In reply, it has been objected that neither he nor anyone else happens to have $5 million to spare. My personal guess is more like $5 trillion. If each hard-core cryonicist will contribute only $10 billion, we can reach my figure. How much has been spent on preserving, say, kidneys? Or finding an acceptable blood substitute? These are goals of our oh-so-beneficent government, and have received considerable attention with only very limited success. It's conceivable that we could do the research for maintenance of a (live, unfrozen) severed head for under $100 million. This might achieve 50% of the goals of the cryonics movement (keeping the majority of us alive until we can regenerate bodies and arrest further brain aging). It leaves out a sizable minority with conditions that directly involve the brain. It doesn't have the comforting quality of solid last-resort freezing. I actually agree with Charles Platt that we should be doing more research, but I think a research plan is the first step. On a different level, we need to identify the causes that are keeping most people from becoming cryonicists: If enough people have frozen relatives, the research will follow. I think there's been enough TV exposure that most people are acquainted with the concept of freezing-at-death, even if they can't connect it with the word "cryonics". I'd conjecture that there's a wide spectrum of lightly held opinions ranging from "ripoff" to "might work" to "already been done, I saw it in the Enquirer". And yet we've got only a few hundred people signed up, and the media can still make a big story out of "frozen bodies discovered in a storage shed in Colorado". My highly opinionated opinion is that the hangup is cost - if the cost can come down, the number of cryonicists will jump, and we're halfway home. Public resistance will fade as the concept becomes ordinary, and soon after, we'll see demands for government funded freezers for the indigent. Rich Schroeppel Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3042