X-Message-Number: 757
Subject: CRYONICS American Cryonics News 2/2
From:  (Edgar W. Swank)
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 92 19:42:24 PDT

BOOK REVIEW
 
Both Eric Drexler and Alvin Toffler have new books out.  I must
confess I was somewhat disappointed with Drexler's latest effort
Unbounding The Future (Drexler, Peterson and Pergamit, William Morrow
andCo., 1991) which unlike his brilliant first effort, Engines of
Creation, makes no mention at all of cryonics and not much more about
the cure of aging and/or life extension which after all, is the
ultimate promise of nanotechnology.  Also, as a philosopher, albeit a
theologically trained one, I have difficulty with Drexler's habit of
periodically asserting "Nothing can live forever," without ever
explaining exactly what he means or why he means it.  Assertions
without evidence are difficult enough to accept but assertions without
argument have a tendency to seem just a bit dogmatic and "preachy."
 
On the other hand I thoroughly enjoyed Toffler's latest effort,
Powershift, (Bantam Paperbacks, 1991).  Although Toffler has never
mentionedcryonics, immortalism or life extension in any of his books,
(Future Shock, 1970; ThirdWave, 1980;) or his latest, the book is
nevertheless, very well written, and really quite exciting to read and
has a very important message for us.  Toffler, quite accurately, I
think, describes some fundamental and very positive changes ( Toffler
would say transformations) that are taking place not only at the
global level but in our everyday world --- the world of supermarkets,
hospitals, banks, business offices, television, telephones, work,
home, family and personal life.  The entire structure of power that
has held the world together is indeed now disintegrating and this is
happening at every level of human society.  Old patterns of power are
fracturing along new and sometime strange lines and this breakup of
old-style authority and power in our daily life is accelerating just
at the very moment when global power structures are disintegrating.
What is happening says Toffler is not a "power shift" but a
"transformation" of power that is creating an entirely new system of
wealth creation based on individualism, innovation, and information.
These ideas of course are not original with Toffler.  They have been
articulated fordecades by Buckminster Fuller and FM-2030 nee
Esfandiary (see Are You A Transhuman?, FM-2030 (Warner Books, 1989)
.However, they are no less accurate or significant as presented by
Toffler and the book and its theme should not only be informational to
cryonicists and immortalists but inspirational as well.  After all,
who are more individualistic and innovative than cryonicists and
immortalists?  Although he does not draw the parallel in his book, I
could not help but think of the current confrontations between Saul
Kent and Bill Faloon of the Life Extension Foundation, and the FDA,
and between Alcor and the California Department of Health Services as
perfect examples of what Toffler calls "The forces now shaking power
at every level of the human system...."  Not too long ago people
really did trust the experts.  We entrusted our health and our very
lives, and the health and lives of our families to government
bureaucrats, attorneys and politicians who we were assured were
infallible experts in these matters and who did not need to be
bothered with contrary views and opinions.  But that was before people
began asking even their most trusted expert, their most trusted
institution, their family physician if he/she didn't mind if they got
a second opinion.  And when he/she said "Are you questioning my
professional judgement as a doctor?"  went ahead and got a second
opinion anyway and sometimes even a third.  People more and more today
are getting "second opinions", or literally "second guessing" the
"experts" in all fields and areas of life and the experts do not like
it.  That is why Saul Kent and Bill Faloon find themselves confronted
by the legal legions of the FDA which literally wants to put them in
jail for decades for what the FDA calls "fraud," which they define as
"promoting" (providinginformation about) "unproven" (not approved by
the FDA) drugs and therapies.  The Life Extension Foundation offers
people "second opinions" and thereby second guesses the "experts" at
the FDA and the consensus of the "experts" in the medical and medical
research fields.
 
This contention by the FDA that "anyone who provides, distributes or
transmits information about products andprocedures that the FDA does
not agree with is guilty of a crime is of course merely another
attempt by government to restrict the rights of free press and free
speech guaranteed to all Americans by the U.S.  constitution.  The
actions of the FDA however not only pose a grave threat to the freedom
of all Americans but also a grave threat to our lives as well, for
hundreds of thousands of Americans have died because they were denied
their right to second opinions,i.e.  to access information about
"unproven" therapies that had not yet wound their way through the
politically dominated, redundant and circuitous approval process
designed by the bureaucrats and lawyers at the FDA to justify their
existence, their"authority" and their jobs.  Durk Pearson and Sandy
Shaw, authors of the 1982 bestseller, Life Extension:  A Practical
Scientific Approach, in a recent interview by PEOPLE magazine pointed
out that the FDA is probably responsible for the deaths of more people
than Hitler and Stalin combined!  And after losing decisively the
first round in their effort to close Alcor and cryonics down in
California without scoring a single point, the California Department
of Health Services is in court again, (oh well,it's not their money)
arguing that unless an activity e.g.cryonics, is specifically allowed
by the state, than it is disallowed.  In other words, a citizen of the
U.S., even in death, has only those rights specifically granted to
them by the state.  This of course was precisely the political
position of the now unemployed Eastern European communists and exactly
the opposite of the political philosophy enunciated by our nation's
founders in both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S.
Constitution.  But as Toffler points out, it is not only the FDA and
the California Department of Health Services, but every government
agency and every powerful "respected" special interest group in every
country that is now engaged in a battle to contain and control the
spread of knowledge which decreases the need and the respect for "duly
constituted" centralized authority and encourages people to think for
themselves.  All such efforts are however doomed to failure, for just
as people have come to realize that war is too important to be left to
generals and international policy to the "Best and The Brightest," so
too matters of health, life extension, and death, are too important to
be entrusted to the trained and dedicated experts at the FDA and DHS
who do not seem to appreciate taxpayers and citizens who insist upon,
oreven worse, volunteer, second opinions.
 
Knowledge is wealth.  Knowledge is power.  Now, thanks to modern
computers and telecommunications, knowledge, like the proverbial
genie, is out of the bottle and floating freely everywhere and even
the most powerful and most ferocious sultans will not beable to force
it back into the bottle.
 
QUOTES THAT WILL LIVE FOREVER
 
"Evil is nothing but the destructive things people do because they are
going to die."
 
Alan Harrington
The Immortalist
 
"In our times the only dignity is in mobilizing intelligently to
overcome aging and death."
 
FM - 2030
Are You A Transhuman?
 
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right.  When he states that something
is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
 
Alfred C. Clarke
 
"There is nothing physicians and research scientists fear more than
being regarded bytheir colleagues as a nonconformist or "too far out"
 
Anonymous

--
 (Edgar W. Swank)
SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005  Silicon Valley, Ca

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