X-Message-Number: 9053
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9041 - #9045
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 20:58:03 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

Yes, the closer we get to some means to lengthen our lives the more SOME
people will decide that cryonics isn't needed.

Some of these people will then die in auto accidents, others in hospital with
a condition no one knew how to fix, others of many other conditions. There is
now no means for immortality in the sense of a treatment which actually
makes a whole living human being so that he/she does not age. Telomeres may
or may not be helpful, but they only make CELLS immortal --- those that
divide, that is. There are good reasons to believe that aging of a whole
human being is more complex than that. So those who decide that cryonics
isn't needed will then proceed to die of whatever causes of death remain 
after the latest antiaging treatment. And there will be some.

Of course, we will always have dangers which we don't understand how to 
escape, at any fixed time. Those who make no cryonics preparations will
die of these dangers; those who do make cryonics preparations will have a
chance (a significant one, better than now, perhaps) of not dying of these 
dangers.

Whether this affects the growth of cryonics is hard to say. It may do so
for a while or not at all, depending on just how powerful an antiaging 
treatment may seem to be at the time it is announced. But the possibility
that something very bad may happen to you will never go away; and anyone
who likes living can live orders of magnitude longer, even without aging,
if they also arrange for their suspension too. The usual lengths of time
someone might live are calculated as if aging disappears but all other
sources of death do not ie. accidents, Ebola, flu, and other diseases, etc.
If you arrange for your suspension you will escape a high proportion of
these other causes too: and just as now, you have no way of telling whether
or not you might innocently cross a street tomorrow and be killed by someone
driving a car. 

Personally, I think that means to cure aging would make cryonics much more
interesting to many. Now they feel hopeless, and so pay no attention. If
we had a means to cure aging, they would cease to feel hopeless and learn
just how precious life is, and so join a cryonics society just like we
insure our houses now.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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