X-Message-Number: 4103
Date: 28 Mar 95 13:37:57 EST
From: "Kent, Saul" <>
Subject: How Much Do We Want To Live?

	David Stodolsky says: "It is very likely that peoples' religious
beliefs are the basis for their attitudes toward cryonics."
	I agree that many people aren't interested in cryonics, or have
negative attitudes towards it, because of their religious beliefs.
	However, there also are many people who have no religious
beliefs, or whose religious beliefs have no effect on their attitude
towards cryonics.
	In my opinion, the greatest influence on the attitude of those
people towards cryonics is the poor quality of today's cryonics methods.
We are in the position of treating patients who have been declared "dead"
by a physician, who have (in most cases) suffered serious additional
damage from ischemia, and who suffer *severe* additional damage from the
process by which we freeze them. It is, therefore, not surprising that
most people (including most scientists) believe there is little or no
chance that these patients can be revived in the future!
	My point is that if we--the *very* small minority of people who
*do* believe there is a chance of revival for today's cryonics patients,
fail to improve upon today's methods, no one else will! It is *we* who
must convince the skeptics that cryonics can work, and the only way I
think we can do so is to demonstrate progress in our cryopreservation
methods, which leads to the achievement of suspended animation.
	If we fail to gain credibility for cryonics, I don't think the
movement will grow very much, I think the patients will be at continuous
risk because of the weakness of the movement, I think it will take longer
to develop repair methods that might revive cryonics patients who remain
frozen, and I think there may be economic, legal, and political reasons
that could block attempts at the revival of such patients.
	On the other hand, if we *do* develop suspended animation, I
believe cryonics will evolve into a fully accepted medical procedure,
which will eliminate or reduce substantially many of the risks to
cryonics patients by providing them with legal, political, and other
societal protections. I further believe that such an achievement will
foster the value of life in society and lead to *greatly* accelerated
funding for research to repair damage in cryonics patients, to retard
aging, and to rejuvenate the aged. Moreover, I think it will make it
possible for some of us to avoid *entirely* the necessity of being
frozen, and enable the vast majority of us who *need* to be frozen to be
revived with our identities intact...in many cases relatively soon after
being frozen!
	As I see it, the benefits of developing suspended animation are
so great and compelling that I cannot fathom why everyone in cryonics who
can afford to do so doesn't spend a substantial portion of their assets
to make it happen!
	David Stodolsky's statement that: "...the very idea of 'progress'
and the support for research, which is crucial to the advancement of
science is under attack these days" has little or no relevance to our
situation. First of all, the idea of scientific progress has *always*
been under attack. I have no idea whether the idea is more under attack
today than in the past, although it is my impression is that it was under
greater attack in the 1960s than it is today.  However, such attacks are
largely irrelevant to *our* situation because *we* are the only ones with
any *real* interest in funding and conducting suspended animation
research and--in my opinion--we *have* the money to fund it and to
succeed in achieving it!
	Ultimately, it may boil down to a simple, but very profound
question...how much we want to live...how much we value the prospect of
living for centuries in a universe of illimitable possibilities...and how
much we wish to avoid the prospect of being dead....forever!

Saul Kent

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