X-Message-Number: 5686
From: John de Rivaz <>
Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 17:45:21 +0100
Message-ID: <>
References: <4ecoup$> <>

In article: <>  Owen Lewis 
<> writes:
> Death is a natural and necessary concommittant to life and must
                         ^^^^^^^^^
> come to all living things. Some death may be considered untimely
> in the sense that a full life cycle has not been run, but nature 
> is nothing if not profligate and wasteful. Untimely death is as
> much a part of the way of the world as any other feature. 

I disagree with the use of the word "necessary"

There are few examples of life on the Earth that do not age and die - 
mainly plants. Some say that lobsters only die as a result of predation, 
and turtles have very long lives.

Already humans go against nature. We have colonised parts of the Earth that 
require us to wear clothes and use housing and artificial heat. Our natural 
lifespans in the jungle were about 20 to 30 years, today anyone dying at 
that age is considered to have died early.

Now we are taking a step further. Age research is revealing ways of pushing 
the maximum lifespan limit back. Already in 1996 there have been articles 
in the UK press about the scientific aspects of telomere research and also 
the political and social implications.

Last year the British media carried a number of high quality and supportive 
articles on the subject of cryonic suspension - the freezing of people at 
the time of death with a view to revival when science has advanced to cure 
the freezing and other damage present. [It is important to realise that 
death is a process not something that happens at an instant, and death as 
defined by laywers today may not be an irrecoverable condition 60 or a 
hundred years hence.  A definition of death could be "A person is dead when 
insufficient personal and individual information exists to restore the dead 
person by any means present or future".]

-- 
Sincerely,     ****************************************       
               * Publisher of        Longevity Report *
John de Rivaz  *                     Fractal Report   *
               *          details on request          *
               ****************************************
In the information age, sharing can increase world wealth enormously,
because giving information does not decrease your information.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JohndeR


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