X-Message-Number: 9630
Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 08:21:46 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #9622 - #9629

Hi again!

A small correction to my Canberra story. Substitute sequoias for
redwoods. The weight of the story remains as before.

Though Saul spoke glibly of the "failure" of cryonics, he never
states clearly just how cryonics has failed. The aim of cryonics is
immortality, an aim which by its nature will take a long time to 
reach anything even close to fruition. Sure, getting lots of people
to join would help; getting cryobiologists on our side would help;
convincing more people of the merits of cryonics would help; means
to show that we can freeze and then revive brains will help. But
none of these are in themselves our aim.

Just what is meant by cryonics "working"? The major use of cryonic
suspension is to provide a means by which those suspended can make
use of undeveloped medical technology --- which because it is not
yet developed will happen at some unknown future time. Because of 
the state of our present technology for suspensions, it's easy to
lose sight of this: the fact that those we suspend must be "dead"
and the related fact that our methods cause lots of damage bulks
large in our perception. But even if we could freeze and revive
people perfectly (including those who are very sick, hardly the 
best choices for such a stressful technique) that issue of future
medicine would still remain. So will cryonics "work" if we can 
simply freeze someone and revive them, or must we show a patient
who was cured of some illness which doctors at the time of his or
her suspension had no clue as to how to cure?

I myself, when I first heard of Ettinger's idea, was struck by its
logic. If incurable disease is a reason for suspension, then the
damage caused by suspension itself counts also as one more incurable
disease, and therefore the time to begin suspension is NOW. And we
can no more predict the time at which any given disease becomes
completely curable than the time at which patients frozen by present
methods could be revived. For that matter, we may find that some
diseases are not curable, just as some suspension damage may be 
too great. Advanced Alzheimer's Disease gives an example: sure, we
can no doubt repair a patient's brain so that it works like that
of a healthy person, but bringing that patient back remains 
impossible.

I say this not out of satisfaction with current methods at all, but
because the idea behind cryonics seems to have been lost by those 
such as Saul. We freeze ourselves not because we are assured in 
any way that our currently incurable condition will become curable,
but because it is labelled INCURABLE by virtually everyone in current
medicine, none of whose commentators have the least idea just what
might be done to help it. Yes, medical history gives us lots of 
examples in which the entire medical establishment comes down against
some idea --- which later proves to be correct. We are seeing that 
right now with the research of 21st Century Medicine on revival after
more than 5 minutes: I remember clearly how in the early 1970's the
very idea that people might be revivable after more than 5 minutes
was anathema to most physicians. This does NOT mean that everything
commonly believed about a medical condition will be shown wrong, but 
it should at least make us think that there is a good deal we do 
not know about future abilities and technology in medicine. 

The merit of current methods consists solely of the fact that they 
provide A POSSIBILITY of using future medicine to cure a currently
incurable condition, so "incurable" that no one has the least idea
what to do with it. The alternative is simple annihilation. Who 
would rationally chose a certainty of annihilation against the 
possibility of life?

And yes, such an idea is bound to cause opposition. By promoting
suspensions (note that I'm saying that whether or not suspension 
itself is now reversible does not matter here) to those with "incurable
diseases" or "incurable conditions" we are saying to all the experts:
you are WRONG, and your expertise will someday seem the expertise of
savages. Why wouldn't we meet with opposition?

(contd)
			Thomas Donaldson

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