X-Message-Number: 4685
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #4668 - #4672
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 1995 18:18:02 -0700 (PDT)

Hi!

Mike is quite right that things don't always go well. Even a superficial 
reading of history will tell anyone this --- though some may decide that their
own society (country,culture) are special. It even looks as if the US is now
in the first stages of decline.

And I will also say, from personal experience, that NO country I know of 
treats those who are not citizens with the same gentility as those who are.
Naturally the degree of discrimination (and even the reasons for it) differ
from country to country, but it's always there. Making cryonics worldwide 
should involve much more than just seeing that cryonics societies are set up
in other countries. As much as possible, we should cultivate the attitude that
any other cryonicist from anywhere is closer to us than someone from our own
country who is not a cryonicist. We may have to ask them to help us move,
someday.

As for development of safe, complete suspended animation, I feel a bit more
pessimistic than Brian Wowk seems to about its social and general effect. Lots
of people claim not to want to live now, and may not see that the future will
be any better. And even now, prominent gerontologists argue that we should not
change our lifespan. It would certainly help, but it would do so by removing
only the top layer of problems for cryonics. And even with suspended animation
there is another layer: just how can we make it continue until a cure for this
patient is found? Really establishing cryonics in society at large can easily
take a minimum of 100 years (not that anyone frozen now will be revived then,
but that most people will accept the idea in general and for themselves then).
We cannot prove that our patients will last long enough to be revived until
someday we have a patient who lasts long enough to be revived. That will take
a long time. After all, cryonics hasn't even existed for 50 years!


As for my personal ATTITUDE to these problems, I think I am temperamentally more
optimistic than Mike. But even temperament doesn't excuse a lack of awareness.

			Best and long long life,

			Thomas Donaldson


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