X-Message-Number: 4853 Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 08:27:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug Skrecky <> Subject: incremental immortality When Steve Bridge, the president of Alcor admits to believing that if cryonics organizations remain the same size they are currently, they are all doomed we should all take notice. Alternatives to cryonics no matter how ridiculous or unlikely they may seem at first glance, deserve a second look. The following article which deals with one alternative to cryonics was the first one I wrote for Canadian Cryonics News. It appeared in the Autumn 1990 issue. Little did I realize it at the time but an experiment was in progress then, which could very well have laid the foundations for implimenting incremental immortality, but more on this later. INCREMENTAL IMMORTALITY: AN ALTERNATIVE TO CRYONICS By Doug Skrecky Faced with death we have three options: We can ignore it, disbelieve in it, or do something about it. The religious skeptic has had little alternative but to avoid thinking about the topic of death as there was little profit in such thinking. Attitudes like you live on in your children somehow gain ready acceptance and the mind refuses to think any farther. For true believers the situation is better. Buddists have their nirvana, Hinduists their reincarnation, while Christians have their resurrection. Recently alternatives for the religious skeptic have arisen. The idea of passively accepting our biological fate is being challenged by recent scientific advances. Now Cryonics and Incremental Immortality both claim to offer a chance at attaining eternal life. However while these claims are all beset with difficulties Incremental Immortality is a much more reasonable proposition. One problem with Cryonics is that the technology for reanimating frozen cadavers does not yet exist and may never exist. It has been claimed that a hypothetical future superscience based on microscopic industrial robots in the nanometer size range will one day be capable of effecting sufficient repairs at the molecular level such that (our) dead bodies could be reanimated provided they were sufficiently well preserved. Even if we are generous and grant that this technology will one day develop Cryonics still faces the even more serious challenge of ensuring adequate preservation. If freezing is delayed by even one day after death brain microstructures would likely be destroyed beyond any hope of future repair. Unless one commits suicide or is dieing slowly of a terminal disease it may be difficult to ensure that freezing will in fact take place shortly after death. It may take several centuries (if not millenia) to develop reanimating technology and it is highly doubtful that cryonics organizations themselves could last that long. Even with the permafrost burial option one would have to contend with global warming as well as bacterial action. Cryonics is an all-or-nothing proposition -most likely nothing. Cryonics deserves credit for at least trying to prolong life. Neither ignoring death nor disbelieving in it accomplish even this much. However like other attitudes Cryonics still assumes that little can be done to currently increase our life expectancy. This proposition itself is now in doubt. Advances in medical science are yielding immortality in installments. Cut down on the saturated animal fats in your diet and you cut down your risk of dying prematurely from cardiovascular disease. Consume wheat bran products and you are less likely to die of colon cancer. Apply a sunscreen and the risk of skin cancer is lessened. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables and you will consume fewer calories. Calorie restriction without malnutrition slows the aging process and extends maximum lifespan in laboratory animals. Some supplements can cut disease risk. Chromium and niacin cut cardiovascular disease risk, while chlorophyllin cuts cancer risk. Recently supplements have also slowed aging as well and radically extended the lifespan of rats. Deprenyl treated adult rats live as long as 2 weeks, while untreated rats are all dead by 164 weeks. (Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 46:237-2 1988) Coenzyme Q10 has also extended survival in a recent test at the UCLA Medical Center -the final results will be released by 1991. If current methods for increasing life expectancy are all utilized average life expectancy would be increased from 75 years to around a 100 years. While this is not immortality 25 years of life is still 25 years of life. Incremental Immortality is based on the continuing rapid advance of medical technology. If you are currently about 40 years of age you can expect to live to about 100 provided you do something now. In 20 years this figure may be higher. By the time you are 100 you might be faced with a 200 year lifespan if certain breakthroughs occur in the next 60 years. By the time you are 200 even the disease of aging itself might be curable. Like Cryonics, Incremental Immortality is a long shot. Unlike Cryonics it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. If the big win doesn't happen the consolation prize is still an extra 25 years. Ben Best's Editorial Comment: "It is almost certain that medical advances will continue to lengthen the average lifespan, and it is certainly a fact that simple measures such as controlling one's diet can increase one's life expectancy. However there is no guarentee that aging will be cured within the lifetime of anyone now alive. (It will almost certainly not occur within the lifetime of older cryonicists, given the dismal attention antiaging research currently recieves!) Furthermore everyone is subject to some risk of death by accident or homicide. I see these two methods of life extension as being complementary, not conflicting." ......My present position on this issue can be summed up in a question to cryonicists: Do you currently take melatonin, chromium picolinate and deprenyl? One bird (or life) in hand is worth far more than two in the bush. If you plan on spending over $100,000 on cryonics you should be willing to spend far less than this taking all of the top life extension supplements. While I was writing the above article a remarkable experiment was being conducted at North Dakota University to determine the effect of injections of growth hormone on the lifespan of aged mice. The results were so outstanding that I believe they may even herald the begining of the age of immortality. How long could GH treated mice live? We do not know. The experiment was terminated 6 weeks after all the control mice had died. It seems the GH treated mice were taking so long to expire that the experimenters may have lost patience. The GH treated mice were executed en mass at the end of the experiment. The reader is invited to read the report himself and render his own judgement: see Mechanisms of Ageing and Development Vol.57 87-100 1991. I get sweaty hands when I read it. Of course the experiment needs to be replicated sans executions, particularly with other strains of rodents before a final judgement can be rendered. I believe this should be the first priority for antiaging research. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4853