X-Message-Number: 5361 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #5321 - #5325 Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 22:34:43 -0800 (PST) Hi again! In answer to Saul's comment about how cryonics WILL grow rapidly, I feel dubious still. Naturally with a suitable exponent it does not take very long for 5% of the population to become 95% of the population (not a large number of doublings at all). It's that which may cause the illusion of especially rapid growth. BUT (though certainly I may be wrong) I am basing my opinion first on the present and past growth of cryonics, and second on my general understanding of history. I am presently 51 and will turn 52 on 1 January 1996. I understand why Saul feels desperate. I myself have had my first serious brush with death, and will no doubt have others. I will also add one important comment to my previous discussion of the growth of cryonics (and immortalism, too, for that matter): I was counting number of cryonicists, not probability of success. My own opinion is that if cryonicists stopped their petty squabbles and got to work (either simply donating the required funds, or actually doing research, or helping out however they could) then we have a decent chance at learning how to suspend BRAINS within a few years. To me that would be an important milestone. If you were not a cryonicist, and had given no thought at all to such issues, it would seem quite trivial. In fact, once achieved it would be hard for us to use such a milestone in recruiting people. But it would mean that with proper preparations a suspension patient could be suspended without worrying about destruction of their self. A second event which looks like its very close to happening is the passing of some kind of assisted suicide law. That's a delicate matter for cryonics because we don't just want ANY kind of assisted suicide; depending on just what conditions this (possible) law gives, it may help or hinder us. On the optimistic side, one law in one jurisdiction will lead to others elsewhere; especially if we speak up about it we might push things so that somewhere the law comes out right. And maybe it will come out right for almost everywhere. This would mean, of course, that we would have a much better chance of arranging our suspensions so that they take place under good conditions --- from which the issue about suspending brains becomes VERY important. One REALLY IMPORTANT thing that every cryonicist should understand is that the success of cryonics is NOT a matter of majority vote. If you insist that everybody or almost everybody becomes a cryonicist before you feel easy about your situation, you may as well give up now. But the success (or failure) of cryonics depends not just on any consensus of society but on REALITY. Even small groups have managed to persist and achieve their goals, because they saw much better than others just how reality was arranged. (Reality, too, is not a matter of majority vote). In that special sense, we may indeed win out.... even though our numbers, compared to the total population of the country or the world, remain small. For immortalism we just might have a similar situation. One major problem (independent of politics and the stupidity of institutions such as the FDA) is that treatments which affect aging will take TIME and lots of it to actually show their success. We can look at animals, sure, but if many people ask for a proof on human beings of the same kind as that in which we prove, say, that a polio vaccination works, then they miss the point completely. And such people, if they do want to become ageless, will have to content themselves with little visible progress. (Yes, some scientists believe that we can develop tests of the rate of aging. But that too would require lots of verification in human beings. Suppose I take a drug which results in an apparent lack of aging by one of these tests, but possibly not all of them. Just how is that to be interpreted?). Even doing a lifespan test on rats or mice isn't a brief matter, and one reason why many more haven't been done is that for scientists, who must produce (say) 1 paper every year at least to be thought active, running an experiment which will take 4 years to produce any serious results just doesn't look very happy. What will happen to their academic position? Where will they get the grant money they need to support their lab? If we seriously wish to prolong our lives, we must accept the idea of using "unproven" (meaning unproven on human beings) treatments. There is no other way with ourselves and our current lifespans. In practice, of course, no one will instantly come up with an elixer of immortality. Instead we will have a succession of drugs each one better than the other. Melatonin, for instance, is now popular. I agree that it has a positive effect; but animals receiving it still grow old. Given all these issues, I think it quite reasonable that those who DO choose to take "unproven" drugs will in the end live longer and healthier than those who don't. But they, too, will have to accept that most people will not do this. As for people like Saul who want to help such research along, I would say that however they fund research, they should take into account that the results obtained may not ring any bells with most people for a long time. So we can increase the lifespan of a rat by 50% (a big increase, by the way) --- that just won't register in the view of most people, not for a long time. But whatever happens in the next 10 years or the next 20, remember above all else that reality is never decided by majority vote. And it is that reality, not any majority, that we should work towards as much as we can. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5361