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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9053