X-Message-Number: 7259
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 1996 20:01:22 -1000
From:  (Rick Friedlander)
Subject: reanimation

One point missed in discussion about future reanimation is the demographics of

future civilization.  In the industrialized world the percentage of older people
is increasing each year.  If recent news about medications to ameliorate
Alzheimer's disease is true, we may expect to have an older, wiser group
in the near future (and continuing) populating the earth.  I for one think that
is a good thing.  The problem with current life span is that by the time one
is old enough to mellow out and be more tolerant of others- one croaks!

As far as worrying about who will reanimate the frozen few, I thought that's
what the funding is all about.  Isn't the whole idea to fund one's suspension
and care at least a century out into the future?  That's why is seems to me
to be of the utmost importance to have the Cryonics companies show stable
leadership, and like insurance companies, make the utmost effort to reflect
that stability to the public (including this news group). 

When I see quarreling it makes me worry about the long-term stability of
cryonics. 
We have to look at cryonics as life insurance, market it as life insurance,
even fund it as life insurance.  Ideally, we would want a cryonics company
to be a public company with shareholders and billions in assets.  Wouldn't you
rather buy a cryonics policy from Allstate if you could?

As far as worrying about population: there is room for billions more people on
Earth without crowding if the oceans are used for floating cities powered by
OTEC (ocean thermal electric).  Read Marshall Savage's seminal "Millennial
Project" for more on that not to mention terra-forming the moon and Mars to
provide room for plenty more.  All this can be done with current technology,
as Mr. Savage spells out.  

It would be nice to picture a scenario where I am reanimated in 2030 and I
awake to find a global village populated by a energetic grey-haired friendly
people who live in homes powered by the sun, where war is a thing of the past,
and the grandchildren live on the Moon.  Why not?


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