X-Message-Number: 5567
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From:  (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Don't talk about neurosuspension
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 02:19:23 GMT
Message-ID: <>

References: <4ch85p$> <4cmd83$> 
<> <4cvua6$>

In article <4cvua6$>,
Randy Smith  <> wrote:
>doing this for us. When I spent a class period on cryonics with my 7th 
>graders last year, at least half of them were already familiar with the 
>idea from a recent movie, _Demolition Man_. The movie, while not exactly 

Actually, the concept has been around in tons of movies and goes back
further to myth and legend.

But actually, after you get past the "death is part of the natural order"
phenomenon, the thing that seems to turn most people off is the idea
that anybody has signed up for neurosuspension.  I've often seen people
who hear about cryonics hear that and decide it's all kooks.

Now I'm not going to rehash the neurosuspension argument here.

But I wonder if it might be wise for all cryonics organizations to simply
not talk very much about it -- except of course in the contract.

Full body suspension is comprehensible to the world at large.  Neurosuspension
requires a *much* greater understanding of the principles and an extra
leap of faith.

Indeed, neurosuspension is an economic decision in part, since it's obviously
*somewhat* riskier than full-body, but much cheaper.  (It also may be less
risky in some ways too, but the factors are quite different.)

But I think the position should be that "We recommend full body suspension,
though it is true that yes, some members, in order to save money on the
cost of the suspension have elected to freeze only the brain, in the hope
that revival technology will also be able to regrow a fresh young body
for the brain in a process akin to cloning."   Ie. to say, "Sure some
people are doing that to trade off cost for the risk of not having their
old dead body available."   Look at little down on "them" even though it
turns out it's almost everybody, even the people doing the talking.

People will tolerate the concept of freeze-thaw-wake up.  That's because
they don't understand it at all.  They'll buy a movie like Iceman, or
think it's like a steak in the freezer.   Cloning and nano to rebuild
bodies or artificial bodies or even downloading -- that's just way too much
for the public.
-- 
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp.	 
The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,160,000 paid sbscrbrs.)  http://www.clari.net/brad/


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