X-Message-Number: 7371
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7359 - #7367
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 17:11:54 -0800 (PST)

Hi guys!

Well, for Mr. Merel:

I shall try to state what our main difference is. Mr. Merel seems to believe

that people (in which class he may not include himself) will automatically breed
more people for the slightest reason. I believe that every time a couple
decides to deliberately have a child, they will think over the prospects of
that child before they do so. 

If we were to agree with Mr. Merel, then we would clearly also find ourselves
in a long term pickle. 

However I do not agree. I think that more and more people are not only trying 
to assess the prospects of their children before they make them. True, there
are various places where this still does not happen, and such places may 
someday find themselves in a pickle. However all over Asia, and more and more
in Latin America, and certainly in the Pacific reason, couples can and do 
practise the kinder varieties of birth control which our technology makes 
possible. And note that this practise does not necessarily comport with the
ideas of local theologians... many US Catholics practise birth control,
regardless of what their Pope may have to say about the matter.

Fundamentally, for some mysterious reason mothers and fathers love their
children and would not willing produce a child only to have it starve to
death later. Nor does it take much intelligence or knowledge, even for 
an uneducated peasant, to realize that children have stopped dying off so
much and so automatically, and therefore if he/she makes a child, that 
child will live --- and so want food, education, work, etc.

Yes, in some places there are deliberate attempts to stop this foresight.
No, such places are not common. One way the religious try to do this is
to put a stop to older, more brutal methods of birth control without
allowing the newer kinds: I vividly remember the uproar in Port Moresby when
I was there in 1970 and a woman tried to sell her dead child for meat. 

But then even peasants are aware of such shenanigans, too, and if it gets
too bad they will rebel. Nobody wants to produce children which will live
to age 10 and then starve to death. 

If Mr. Merel really believes that most people (of course, he is wise, good,
etc and is an exception to the rule) really want to make lots and lots of
children with neither foresight about their fate or thought for the world
they will face, then I have no real way to convince him of the opposite.

No, every one of those trucks has a driver.

About publicity for cryonics:

It's certainly true that if Alcor were as large as Microsoft, then it would
have a section devoted to care about just what publicity came out -- though
the need for trust might not make it behave like Microsoft.

Unfortunately, Alcor is NOT as large as Microsoft. And along with that lack
of size go all kinds of consequences, such as very little control over lots
of the publicity about cryonics which gets out. Alcor is not, after all, in
any position to sue whenever something false about Alcor is put out on 
television --- even more so when it is not US television.

I must agree with Steve Bridge: some things we will simply have to accept,
for some time to come. And I think the best thing is to try to be examples
ourselves of what cryonicists are, and keep our own societies upright 
regardless of whatever nonsense is sent out about them. Perhaps that is 
because I believe that truth really will out --- it may take a very long 
time, but it will still come out. And all the negative stories will become
forgotten. We just have to keep going until that happens --- perhaps not
easy, but then what other choice have we?

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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