X-Message-Number: 9631
Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 08:42:54 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #9622 - #9629

(I had to leave my computer temporarily, but continue here)

There is perhaps even more to be said on this subject of patience.
Although his work is rarely studied now, I vividly remember reading
a study by Pitirim Sorokin, who examined history with an eye to finding
regularities and laws in it, not to support one or another national
glory. And one thing he found was that movements which grew slowly
over time often tended to last thousands of years longer than those
which rose up quickly and captured the minds of many people in only
a few years.

For CRYONICS to truly work (I mean here CRYONICS, not suspended
animation, reversible cryopreservation, etc etc) we want it to last
for a very long time. Given any rate of medical progress at all, the
longer it lasts the greater the number of those who might benefit
from it. And what Sorokin's work suggests is that we should EXPECT
cryonics to grow slowly. Its core is a fundamental idea which is
independent of any particular storage method: that even ideas 
universally believed by all medical authorities can show themselves
to be quite false as history proceeds. That we do not now, and will
never, fully understand "disease" or medical conditions well enough
to say of every one: this we can cure now, and this other we know
will never become curable throughout the whole of future time.
And note that what 21st Century Medicine is working on now, with
its work toward revival after 10 minutes, tells us that even some
kinds of "death" are now potentially curable. The range of medical
conditions is far wider than those any doctor now treats.

Is this an argument against further research? It is an argument FOR
further research. But just because a tree grows slowly is no reason
to decide that it should be cut down.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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