X-Message-Number: 3731
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 11:16:59 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: The Wacky Faction


I enjoyed Brian Wowk's message in which he suggested that looking for EEGs
in frozen brains was a wacky idea right up there with contacting frozen
patients via telepathy. But it got me thinking. Maybe those of us who are
arguing for a rational approach to cryonics are wasting our time. Since
the subject has ALWAYS tended to attract "the wacky faction" (which is
presumably why many cryobiologists backed away from it in the 1960s, for
fear of being contaminated by association), and since wish fulfillment
seems to outweigh skepticism as a human need, and since many nutso
pseudoscientists make BIG BUCKS, perhaps it's time to abandon this prim
and prissy love affair with the "scientific method" and join forces with
the wackologists. Some strategies we could pursue: 

* Set up highly publicized seances in cryonics facilities. What better
environment could there be, for contacting spirits of the dead? The 
facilities could be rented out to famous psychics to raise much-needed 
funds for wacky research (see below). Lucrative book deals would be a 
distinct possibility.

* Sell crystals that have been dipped in liquid nitrogen. 

* Leak stories to the National Enquirer and the Star implying that Elvis
is frozen. (Deny everything publicly, of course, but leave open a window
of doubt.)

* Contact the authors of best-selling books about out-of-body and
post-death experiences. Invite them to collaborate with psychics to read
the memories of cryonics patients.

* Get together with some Scientologists, and maybe get them to bring an
E-meter down to the facility. Dunk its electrodes in a dewar and see what
happens. (Hey, look, it got results when L. Ron Hubbard attached the
alligator clips to a tomato plant.)

* Build a giant orgone box around a neuro dewar and try to detect any
variations in the psychic field. 

* Use ultrasound to monitor the state of cryonics patients, in the same 
way that it monitors fetal activity. If this yields no interesting 
results, fake them by jostling the tank.

And so on. Yes, some of these suggestions are in poor taste, but in my 
opinion, this is the inevitable consequence of pseudoscience. Real 
science is redeemed by truth. Pseudoscience, being unverifiable and 
superficial, always tends to lead to the world of Barnum and Bailey.

Isn't that what some of our contributors, here, seem to want?

############################################################
Charles Platt, 1133 Broadway (room 1214), New York, NY 10010
      Voice: 212 929 3983      Fax: 212 929 4467

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