X-Message-Number: 8774 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #8758 - #8765 Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 00:27:22 -0800 (PST) Hi again! To Charles Platt: First of all, I have thanked David BE in my own messages several times. His reporting is very useful. I hope that one of the cryonics journals goes so far as to print it. Second, an important point. Nanotechnology in the sense of Drexler is NOT a presently existing technology. It is a name for a group of technologies, in teh first place, and in his original book he even included biotechnology, which presently remains the most advanced means by which we manipulate atoms on the nanoscale. For that matter, chemistry can be seen as a nano- technology. So if there was an increase in cryonicists, that increase came not from the presence of an actual technology but from the publicising of a set of ideas which might lead to the needed technology. To anyone with common sense (and we are noticing this now) the issue of how long that might take remains open. We'll have to see. The year 2000 approaches, with no signs of any sudden upsurge in our ability to control the world on a nanoscale (yes, work does continue, and we are improving --- I even report such work in PERIASTRON). Furthermore, I used the word "publicising" above quite deliberately. Long before Drexler came on the scene, cryonicists did not spend their time simply wishing for some unknown undescribed means for their revival. There was a strain of active speculation about how it might be done. Drexler even credits this strain and those involved in it as one of the early cases of nanotechnological thinking. It seems to me that using Drexler's book as a demonstration that a fully perfected suspended animation would increase our recruitment has some shaky assumptions in it. If we follow the issue through, we might even have a case that ACTIVE RESEARCH toward suspended animation will increase recruitment, regardless of just when that research bears fruit. Moreover, I note that the increase in growth rate did not last very long. This fits with the suggestions I made in my posting on this Cryonet. While you can be forgiven for thinking that I believed that suspended animation would cause NO increase, I have now made clear just what I think will happen. Sorry that you don't bother to read what I have to say. That's your right, of course. But you should not comment on something you have not read, not a wise thing to do. It can make you look damned foolish, and clearly you're not really that way. For Marty Nemko: Congratulations. I agree that we should try to get a better idea of just why people aren't joining. Reliance on subjective theories just isn't going to be very accurate. It does cost money and effort to do this, naturally. The benefits might be considerable --- not to any increase in our lifespans, which is what the biomedical research is for, but for recruiting and increase in the number of cryonicists. As it is, we blunder about trying different things. Perhaps someday we'll find something; or someday people will slowly start waking up to what we're saying. To Michael O'Neal: What you suggest will happen will only happen if the FDA retains its present power by that time. However, rather than get into a discussion of the future of the FDA I'll add something to what you said. It seems to me that you've brought out one really fundamental issue in cryonics with which even perfected suspended animation does not deal. Suspended animation deals only with a PART of our problem, and many cryonicists may not see that other part because they assume (from their own feelings) that it simply isn't there. It's this: cryonics is NOT for young people suffering from conditions which will become curable with high probability within the next 10 years. It's for all those who come down with some "utterly incurable" disease, one for which little research goes on at present because no one sees any clue to how to cure it. And to anyone with such a disease, suspension is just as much a leap in the dark as it is now. Sure, he doesn't have to wait until "death" is "declared". Whoop de doo! He can be suspended while alive so that he can comfortably believe that he'll wake up 200 years from now to die soon afterwards of hisiomatically incurable disease. In that sense, even with the FDA we might still remain free. We just go on as before, freezing those who have been "declared dead", with all the proper rituals and papers to show it. Right now, most forms of "death" are considered (by most people) to be axiomatically incurable: 5 minutes and you're gone. Cryonicists have not believed that for many years, and now some CRYONICISTS have actually found consistent ways to push that 5 minutes up to 15 minutes. Good work. (They weren't the only ones working in that field, of course, but so far as I know they've gotten the most consistent results). Lots of other axiomatically incurable conditions exist, too. This set of beliefs: that if the Authorities say that nothing can be done, then nothing can be done, not just now but into the indefinite far future, that is the real barrier we must break down to come near to widespread recruiting. And it is a hard barrier to break, for the simple reason that once some condition becomes curable, then everyone forgets how impossible they thought such a cure to be. Why of course! I had hints it was going to happen years beforehand ... And then they ask the Authorities about other, different axiomatically incurable conditions, which will never ever in the history of mankind or the universe meet with a cure. (Actually, we may get wiser about this once we start living for hundreds of years: we'll get to see the whole pattern happen again, and again, and again --- not that this helps, much, our recruiting for NOW). As for the FDA, you're probably right. You've given one more argument as to why the FDA, and the medical establishment, should be abolished. Just how and why THAT will happen I can't say. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8774