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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9631