X-Message-Number: 3723 Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 09:25:21 -0500 (EST) From: Andro <> Subject: Marketing etc When research is done on animals (washing out &/or freezing, reanimating) is this written up for non-specialist publications like Nature or the New England Journal of Medicine? Would it be possible to set up a video camera that would record everything, including treatment for human patients, for the sake of a) documenting activities, b) subsequent scientific/historical analysis, c) news releases when appropriate? Animal subjects might be good video/media candidates if they had distinctive markings, to enforce claims of legitimacy in the public eye (ie, no fraudulent swapping of animals to fake success). Publicity will come at some point with a dramatic video-releasable event: probably reanimation of a frozen mammal, the larger the better. With extensive publicity will come innumerable new problems: aggressive demands for scientific proofs and controls and measures; threats from animal-rights activists; a flood of more-than-usually ill-informed inquiries, visitors, media; more last-minute patients than anyone can handle, ill-prepared, geographically scattered, confused, impoverished; political football, with us as the ball. How we respond to this will be crucial: if we're efficient, rigorously documented, and scientific; with good but unobtrusive security procedures; able to deal with 10 or 100 times the volume of mail and phone calls; caring and responsive even when swamped; yet still able to draw on our most experienced, PR-capable and media-friendly people.... then we could conceivably win both popular and scientific acceptance overnight. If we blow what will be the initial impression for most people, we will have an uphill battle to recover lost ground for a decade. Ultimately, it would cost the world another 10 years of deaths, 10 years of living destructively as if there were no tomorrow. Although some of my past comments about death-row inmates have been flippant, this one is serious: once we have done a large-mammal suspension and reanimation, the next step will be to do it with a human. But current patients and prospective patients will likely not be ready to reanimate for another hundred years, until medicine can repair their problems. Popular use of cryonics will not take off until its viability for humans is demonstrated. Therefore we need volunteers willing to be "killed", to become "dead" within all current legal and medical definitions, rather like firing Yuri Gagarin around the world in a tin can. So where do we look? Me? - no thanks! You? Or who? How about someone who is *required by law* to be killed. If we can be in charge of the process, have him (because it's usually a "him") certified dead (which shouldn't be a problem with heart-death, brain-death, wash-out, even before freezing), then his legal sentence would presumably be completed, and he would be free upon reanimation. (As this person would have the potential to be the greatest media event and cryonics spokesman we could imagine, a Dahmer would not be appropriate for this purpose - we should look for a highly sympathetic, science-oriented, jurisdiction, and for a death-row inmate a) as telegenic as possible and b) as likely as possible to have undergone a personal transformation and not likely to reoffend, but to take advantage of a new life and new celebrity career.) Side-thoughts: would John Glenn (test pilot, astronaut, politician) be receptive to allowing death-sentence inmates this kind of chance for the sake of pushing human frontiers? Would he know politicians who would favor it? Are test-pilots a fertile recruiting area? Once it was done - or even planned - cryonics would become the legal/medical/ethical battleground for society that it *must* before it can be commonly accepted. Once we reach battleground status, there should be limitless funding for all aspects of cryonics (though not necessarily for any of us, or for any existing organization). Medical advances will shoot forward at universities and labs around the world. Again, professionalism becomes crucial: if we're professional, we will be trusted to lead the way; if we're not, we'll be sidelined. The demands on us will change, but never lessen. I trust we will grow to meet all the demands. Ever optimistically, Robin Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3723