X-Message-Number: 7597
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7579 - #7589 
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 20:46:28 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

More about cryonics and its purpose and meaning:

1. Mike Darwin is entirely correct about the need for feedback. That does not
   require that the patient arrive for suspension with no prior damage. If
   we really want to get feedback, the thing to do is to examine the effects 
   of our methods on the brains of "patients" (dogs or other animals) when
   we begin them under all the many conditions in which patients have been
   suspended. There may even be a SMALL amount of room for taking a little
   bit of each human patient's brain for study, but just which bit and where
   clearly need thought.

   Not only that, but we naturally want to be suspended by the best available
   methods --- which means that all the cryonics societies should work 
   together to make their methods better. That IS science, even though 
   no actual suspension counts as science.

   I would finally add that when we use ANY result of scientific investigation
   (not just in cryonics) we aren't doing science. We are going about our 
   ordinary life. I will soon board an airliner to go to Phoenix. In so
   doing, I'm using the results of a very long history of study of airflow,
   chemistry, physics, and so on and on. I can hardly be said to be DOING
   science when I ride the airliner. In exactly that sense, OF COURSE we
   are not doing science when we are suspended. But what should be happening
   in cryonics is that we work to improve our methods, and THAT is the
   science. Briefly: the opposite of science is NOT religion or magic. The
   opposite of science is ordinary life, so far as it has an opposite. 

2. Prometheus, and Paul's Prometheus Project, can easily do something which
   a strictly cryonicist group cannot. It can claim to be developing 
   suspended animation rather than improving suspension methods, for 
   instance. And I agree with Paul that this subject deserves very high
   priority.

   As for suspended animation for medical use, I've already discussed that.
   If people accept such a use, they will discover that they accept cryonics
   too, though it may take them a while. I explained why in my last message.

   But cryonics societies should remain willing to suspend members even if
   they happen not to need suspension under the conditions in which 
   suspended animation can work. Doing so is their reason for existence:
   by doing so, they not only may save the life of their member, but
   they are true to their fundamental ideas. We freeze people not because
   we know how we might someday revive them, but to give them the opportunity
   of eventual revival even if we have no idea at all how that might happen.
   We must not mix the goals of Prometheus with those of cryonics societies,
   though we all certainly know that now, in 1997, there is a close 
   coincidence in terms of the research we want to do.

			   Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson


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