X-Message-Number: 9670
Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 02:55:23 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #9649 - #9663

Hi Charles!

The reason I asked the question about failure was that "failure of
cryonics" simply had not been defined. And cryonics would certainly have
failed if no patient currently suspended can ever be revived. To me
that is the basic, root test of failure or success. AS I said in my
last message, all other issues are basically subsidiary. Sure, it would
be nice to have lots of cryonicists, and nice to have very active
research, and so on and on. But if we cannot revive people, even given
centuries of advances, then WE HAVE FAILED.

As for attitudes to this situation, I believe I have expressed my 
desire for much more research often enough in this forum and others, and
actually provided money to help it along (not that I am nearly as 
wealthy as some cryonicists I can name). You can go on about the kind
of people who are or are not needed for the "success" of cryonics as
long as you want. Even if my attitude is not one you may like, I 
believe I have done my bit.

Moreover, cryonics is more complex than simply the discovery of means
for successful suspended animation. Whether the idea is good or bad,
the basic idea of cryonics is that we find some way to hold people
so that their condition at least does not become worse, so that when
and if a cure for their condition arrives they can use it. This means
that even if we could revive such patients, we would not want to do
so lightly. It also means that cryonics (as distinct from suspended
animation) will NEVER succeed (a paradox!), because at every time there
will always be conditions which we do not know how to cure at all. And
without that cure, patients with those conditions will sit in storage.

Even now we have such a paradox. Saul Kent, I, and you all agree that
someday aging will be totally curable, and consider it a medical 
condition. We expect to be suspended (or hope!) at a time in which
we are old. Go take a survey of doctors and others who even believe
that old age is a medical condition. You will find a very low %. So
just how many people NOW would decide on suspended animation, when at
the age of (say) 75 it looked as if they were dying? 

Within cryonics it's very easy to forget such truths, and believe
that the only obstacle to widespread medical use of cryonics is simply
that we have not got perfected suspended animation. I am doubting this.
I do so NOT because I do not care how well our suspension techniques
work, but because my sense of just how much more needs to be done 
before we come anywhere close to containing a high percentage of the 
population. I have already given my test for the success of cryonics,
and clearly that test will succeed far more easily if our suspension
methods were reversible, even if only for brains. But my test bears
very little relation to the number of people who accept cryonics,
either now or ever.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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