X-Message-Number: 9538
From: Ettinger <>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 17:07:18 EDT
Subject: Patents & Cancer

PATENTS & CANCER

Paul Wakfer's Cryonet # 9533 takes issue with my # 9531. I think that anyone
who carefully compares the two will see where he has missed the mark and
changed the subject.

However, I will comment further on his contention that patent office records
show that most projects of technology have failed. (He spoke of "technological
failures," but the POINT of the discussion is in reference to "projects of
technology" in my sense of the term.)

First, the vast majority of patent applications are merely for gadgets or
improvements in existing gadgets and processes and plant forms etc. Reasons
for rejection are many. The thing may not be novel; it may be too much like
something already patented or something in the public domain. Even if it is
novel, it may not have enough ingenuity in it--it may be something that any
journeyman could easily have thought of, which would make it unpatentable. 

It is rare for a patent application to qualify as an instantiation of a
"project of technology." A versatile, powerful and cheap computer was for a
long time a project of technology; no one patent could cover it, but it is
here, and burgeoning. There are many other examples. 

A project very roughly comparable to the cryo-repair project might be that of
a "cure for cancer." This has "failed" for a long time, but no one is giving
up. (Well, maybe some individuals have given up.) Is it possible that this
goal could be unattainable, even in the long term?

Yes, it is barely conceivable. Maybe, somehow, a blanket cure for all
cancers--even if it involved the finest nanobots--would inevitably inflict
unacceptable damage of other kinds. 

Likewise, it is conceivable that cryo-repair (of current patients) can never
succeed, because vital information was irretrievably lost in the freezing
process, or even in the deterioration before freezing. But this seems
extremely unlikely to me, for reasons I have spelled out before and will again
from time to time and place to place.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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