HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bonneau@hyper.com (Paul Bonneau,,)
Subject: Bank Accounts for the Suspended?
Organization: HyperCube Inc.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 22:54:52 GMT

Hi.

A quick question.  It seems to me that being declared legally
dead while in suspension is a double-edged sword.  It allows
you to collect the life insurance policy that pays for the
suspension, but it likely prevents you from having a bank
account or investments like, say, a mutual fund.  I tend to
agree with Drexler that the nanotechnology required for
reanimation will be available within the century so it seems
a good guess that financial institutions will continue to
exist more or less as they do now (they have continued to do
so for several hundred years so far).  So it would be nice to
have some money in the bank when you wake up.

Is there any way around this?  It seems unlikely that I can
form a trust given today's laws for the future benefit of
a cryonaut.

cheers - Paul.
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Person on a stick
Date: 21 Jul 92 04:15:43 GMT
Reply-To: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Distribution: world,local
Organization: Citicorp+TTI

In article <9220211.7275@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>, rns@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU
(Robert Sturrock) writes:
> pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
> >When you come to kill me, beware: I'm a good shot, and am unlikely to
> >cooperate with my own murder. I'd also note that hundreds of millions
> >of others are unlikely to cooperate, either.
> 
> I think you grossly over-estimate your level of support.

If you think it's unlikely that "hundreds of millions" will spring to
arms in order to prevent you from murdering Perry, I'd say you might be
right (although it's hard to say for certain, Perry might have a LOT of
friends...).

But you're the one who, not too far back, said that euthanizing people
who don't obediently lie down and die when you think they ought to would
be "not a bad idea."  I DO think that "hundreds of millions" of people
would resist you by any means possible, if you took it upon yourself to
announce to them that their time had come.  My grandmother lasted into
her 90s; had you presumed to try and cut her off at a decent,
God-fearing 70, I can guarantee that dozens, if not "hundreds of
thousands" of people would have done whatever they could to stop you. 
Sure, she was a selfish monster to dare to live so long, but I think
most people would be willing to overlook her self-indulgence when
presented with your apparent desire to kill her.

---------

A fanatic is someone who does what he knows that God would do if God knew the
facts of the case.

Some mailers apparently munge my address; you might have to use
bsmart@bsmart.tti.com -- or if that fails, fall back to
72027.3210@compuserve.com.  Ain't UNIX grand?
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Subject: Re: Robert Sturrock: he who would be butcher of millions
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 23:06:18 GMT
Organization: TC Telemanagement, Clearwater, FL

According to pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger):
>So, there you are, from your own bloody mouth, proposing to kill
>healthy people, because there "aren't enough resources".

Remember that the Nazis started with euthenasia.  Genocide came later.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT  <chip@tct.com>, <73717.366@compuserve.com>
   "Do Rush place weird subliminal backmasked messages in their songs to
 compel unwilling geeks to commit evil .sig atrocities?"  -- Dean Engelhardt
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: tolman%asylum.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman)
Subject: Re: Possible thawing process?
Date: 30 Jul 92 16:26:22 MDT
Organization: University of Utah, CompSci Dept

>If two tissues are in contact and they need to be thawed at different
>rates, how do we make them get different amounts of microwaves?

  In brain tumor radiation treatment the laser is rotated to achieve focal
points of high energy with other tissue relatively undisturbed.  Of course,
if you are try to achieve arbitrary precision at all points, one has quite
a puzzle, probably one with no solution.  But some sort of optimal strategy
of the beams  could be found (this is already an area of research for tumor
therapy)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: kqb@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (kevin.q.brown)
Subject: Alcor New York August 16
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: ny
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 16:06:10 GMT

Alcor New York's next meeting will be on Sunday, Aug. 16th, 2 - 4 PM at
the usual place: 72nd. Street Studios, 131 West 72nd. Street, in Manhattan.
We will have a question and answer session with our special guests.

SPECIAL GUESTS will include:

SAUL KENT is an author, life extension activist, Co-founder of the New York 
Cryonics Society in the 60's, and fighter for freedom in health care. Mr. Kent
has contributed over $500,000.00 to Life Extension Research and is the major 
financial supporter of cryonics.

MICHAEL DARWIN is President of Biopreservation, past President of Alcor, past 
Alcor Director of Research, and a major participant in over two decades of 
cryonics research and suspensions.
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: tolman%asylum.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman)
Subject: Re: The "Life Force" Argument
Date: 30 Jul 92 16:22:19 MDT
Organization: University of Utah, CompSci Dept


>Plenty of people who believe in a "life force" also believe
>in reincarnation, and it is not inconceivable (given such a 
>belief) that the soul would prefer its original receptacle.  This
>doesn't doesn't do anything a materialist, which I suspect most
>of us are, but it might help sell cryonics to New Agers.

In the reincarnation religions, one comes back into another form- and a
"lesser" form if one has been bad.  Therefore, if one was in doubt (which
all presumably are) then cryonics would be the way to go- for it is from
the human form one escapes into nirvana.
From: csuab@warwick.ac.uk (Steve Strong)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Is suspension necessary?
Date: 23 Jul 92 15:10:49 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, Warwick University, UK
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

bsb2u@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Brian Samuel Bevins) writes:
: 
: The only serious objection I can see at present is this:  It may
: be that the medical techniques required to revive a "deanimate"
: individual are more likely to be developed than time travel.  This
: seems like a statement of faith at best.

I think nanotech will almost certainly arrive long before time travel
becomes possible. Millions of $s are being invested into nanotech
research, and some good progress has already been made. As far as
I am aware, there is no serious research into practical time travel
at the moment.

: How can we predict
: which of the things we can't do now we will ever be able to do?
: After all, we are not discussing controlled fusion, cross-species
: organ transplants, or some other technology that might not be too
: far off in the future.  Even in those cases whether we will meet
: ultimately with success cannot be accurately predicted, and the
: possibilities being discussed here are centuries off at best.

But we can do nanotech now. Your body is a living example that it
is possible. All the trends in computing and micro-medicine are
heading towards nanotech. It seems quite possible that we will
have a reasonably useful nanotech capability in about 50 years.
There is nothing that we know of which shows us that time travel is
possible - many good physicists are convinced that it isn't. I
think I'd put my bets on nanotech.

: -Brian Bevins

Steve
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Strong - email csuab@dcs.warwick.ac.uk  | Me? Nah, not me pal. Must have
               voice 44 344 424842 extn 2279  | been the *other* Steve Strong.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: kqb@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (kevin.q.brown)
Subject: Re: The Language of Cryonics
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 23:19:04 GMT

    ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

> Date: 23 Jul 92 23:00:33 EDT
> From: "Steven B. Harris" <71450.1773@CompuServe.COM>
> Message-Subject: Clinical vs Legal Death

Lola McCrary says:

  >> I incline towards "legal death", especially since the
definition of "clinical death" does, as pointed out, keep
changing.  <<

   Comment: if somebody pointed that out, they were wrong.  The
definition of "clinical death" stays the same, while it is the
definition of LEGAL death which keeps changing.   "Clinical"
comes from a Greek word meaning bed, and refers in the practice
of medicine to work done at the bedside with ordinary physician's
tools (as opposed to work done in the lab, or with fancy mac-
hines).  Thus, "clinical death" is diagnosed with a stethoscope
and a penlight.  EEG machines and angiography play no part in it,
though they may (or may not) play a role in the definition of
legal death in some places and under some circumstances.

   Please note that the Venn diagram of "legal death" and
"clinical death" is one of two partly intersecting circles.  Some
people are clinically dead but not legally dead (i.e., all those
who haven't been pronounced, and even a few who are going to be
yet resuscitated); some people are legally dead but not clin-
ically dead (i.e., brain dead people on ventilators who've been
pronounced); and finally some people are BOTH legally dead and
clinically dead.  Cryonics in practice requires legal death (the
last time cryonicists began the procedure with a patient who was
clinically dead but not yet legally dead, a lot of people got
into a lot of trouble).  So far, all cryonics patients have been
clinically dead at the start of the procedure as well, but there
is no reason to think that this may always be the case.

   As terms, legal death and clinical death each have problems,
and which one you use depends on the job you want to do.  Legal
death, of course, does not describe an objective state-- it
merely represents some kind of formal social stamp of approval. 
Thus a person is REALLY legally dead only in the sense that he is
REALLY married, or REALLY a doctor.  Clinical death, on the other
hand, describes a more objective phenomenon: circulatory cessa-
tion, implying (at higher temperatures) rapid ischemic damage. 
It does not imply or require permanent loss of the person, but on
the other hand, no one can say just when (objectively) such a
thing occurs.  Without doubt, in fact, it occurs gradually in
most cases as a sort of slow fading.  In one sense, all the
people that Alcor cares for as patients are not dead, but dying. 
When the cryonics process starts they were all dying quite fast,
but by the time they get to -196 Centigrade, they're dying quite
slowly.

                                      Steve
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis
Date:         Mon, 27 Jul 92 09:00:24 CST
From:         Gary Kronk <C09630GK@WUVMD>
To:           NETNEWS@WUVMD
Subject:      How many people suspended?
Newsgroups:   sci.cryonics

I am new to this newsgroup, so I hope I am not rehashing an old subject.

Several years ago I did a lot of research on cryonics, including
writing to the instigator of this movement who lived in Ann Arbor
Michigan (I can not remember his name off hand, and I am at work and
can not get to the letters). My research was for a newspaper I was
working with at the time, and the gentleman I wrote to was extremely
helpful.

I am curious, however, if anyone has a good idea of the number of
people currently in cryonic suspension? Also, how many different
organizations worldwide have teams with the equipment to suspend
people?

Thanks for the info.

Sincerely,
Gary W. Kronk
From: kqb@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (kevin.q.brown)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: The Language of Cryonics
Date: 23 Jul 92 22:28:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnewsl.1992Jul23.222855.12277
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories


     ------------------------ Forwarded Message ------------------------

>Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 19:22:32 PDT
>From: Lola McCrary <lola@lucid.com>
>Subject: cryonics: Cryonics terminology: for mailing list and newsgroup

  From: Brian Wowk <73337.2723@CompuServe.COM>
  Message-Subject: cryonics terminology

	  I agree 100% about usage of "deanimate", and for the same reasons.   
  "Deanimate" should be dropped from the cryonics lexicon and replaced by more  
  specific terms such as "cardiac arrest" and "biostasis."  For the record, I  
  first expressed my misgivings about "deanimate" in my 1988 essay, "The Death  
  of Death of Cryonics" (available from Alcor as a reprint). 

I also agree that jargon should be avoided whenever possible.  There are so
many synonyms for "death" that using a word many perceive as not only a
synonym, but a denial of something they see as "natural" can only be damaging.

	  On the other hand, I disagree that we should continue using the word  
  "death" in the muddled way people usually do...The best way to emphasize this
   is to insist that "death" (with no preceeding adjectives) ONLY be used to
   characterize total obliteration of brain structure.  Continuing medical
   progress will eventually change "death" to mean only this anyway.  It is to
   our advantage to speed this semantic evolution as much as possible. 

	  In reply to Steve Harris' recent postings, my "Death of Death" essay  
  did not suggest that "clinical death" or "legal death" be avoided as terms.   
  It simply said that if you want to say "dead" instead of "cardiac arrest",  
  then indeed make sure you say "*clinically* dead." 

I incline towards "legal death", especially since the definition of "clinical
death" does, as pointed out, keep changing.  Also most people are familiar with
the controversy over legal definitions of death (when to cut off life support,
or life sustaining treatment, etc.).  I consider it possible that some who
don't support cryonics will accept what we do as personal choice, and want less
control of that choice in the hands of the government, or legal and medical
establishments. After all, they may eventually want to make a choice that
*they* don't want those groups messing with.  Also, using words with an
accepted meaning in a different way opens up more discussion that defining a
piece of jargon does.

  > I'd also suggest "revive" in place of "reanimate". 

  Agreed. 

Agreed as well.

Lola
From: pcm@cs.brown.edu (Peter C. McCluskey)
Subject: Re: Is suspension necessary?
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 01:27:48 GMT

In article <36942@ttidca.TTI.COM>, bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart) writes:
|> In article <1992Jul22.204459.8563@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>,
|> > My question concerns what seems to me to be a natural extension
|> > of these ideas.  If you have faith that technology will eventually
|> > make *anything* possible, why bother with cryonic suspension?
|> 
|> I, personally, don't "have faith that technology will eventually make
|> *anything* possible," if "anything" includes things that are forbidden
|> by the laws of physics.  Before I'll buy into time travel, you have to
|> explain to me either A) why time travel DOES NOT violate any physical
|> laws, or B) what's incorrect about our understanding of the laws that
|> appear to get violated.
|> 
|> > Eventually time travel will be developed and the citizens of the
|> > future will have the capability to return to the present era,
|> > rescue the dying individual, and transport him/her to a future
|> > era where his/her condition is curable.
|> 
|> Why isn't this being done now?  If it's possible and therefore
|> inevitable, why aren't more bodies disappearing out of morgues and
|> graves?  Why aren't cured people being returned to our era, either to
|> stay or just to visit?  Or is this actually happening?  Elvis, where are you?

If you analyze at time travel via quantum mechanics (using the many morlds
interpretation rather than a theory which claims that the waveform collapses),
you will see that the alleged violations of physical laws vanish. For a 
definitive explanation, see:

Deutsch, David, "Quantum mechanics near closed timelike line", Physical
Review D, Nov 15, 1991.

For instance, if you use a time machine to kill an earlier version of yourself,
you will create a state like Schroedinger's cat, where the eigenvalues "you live
normally until vanishing into the time machine" and "an older you emerges from
a time machine, kills the younger you, then lives normally" each have densities
of 1/2.

The reason why we haven't seen any time travellers and shouldn't rely on them
to save us is that none of the proposed mechanisms for time travel that I am
aware of (rapidly rotating cylinders, cosmic strings) would allow anyone to travel
back to before the time machine was built.
-- 
         hardcore signature virus: "As a juror in a Trial by Jury, 
         you have the right, power and duty to acquit the defendant 
                 if you judge the law itself to be unjust."
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: tomg@mishima.mn.org (Thomas Greenwalt)
Subject: Re: Definitions, Nanotech.
Organization: Alternative Realities
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 22:29:27 GMT

alyoung@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (amy young) writes:
> It's interesting that I've asked people just *what* is
> nanotechnology... it's thrown around quite frequently, but the two
> people I personally know who blab it all the time can't give a good
> definition of the word...  Anyone want to try?
> 
Molecular scale engineering.
-- 
Thomas S. Greenwalt (Tom-Too)                                  (612)866-1344
7300 Nicollet Ave. South                         tomg@mishima.mishima.mn.org 
Mpls, MN  55423
-------------- You only live once, so goodness sake inhale. ----------------
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: tsf@CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman)
Subject: Re: What is the state of the art in brain scanning ? 
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 16:28:16 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
	<TSF.92Jul29154801@U.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU> <b=pmw!q.mgoodfel@netcom.com>
Originator: tsf@U.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU

In article <b=pmw!q.mgoodfel@netcom.com> mgoodfel@netcom.com (Michael Goodfellow) writes:

   Over dinner the other night I was explaining the idea of scanning and
   simulating the frozen brain to someone and it occurs to me to wonder
   what the state of the art actually is.  

   Does anyone know what the resolution of an MRI scan of the brain is ?
   How far are we from being able to scan a single cell.  Does MRI give
   any information on chemical structure ?  I seem to remember reading
   that it does.

Yes, it does give information about the chemical structure, but not
the chemical structure of any one molecule. 

This was discussed on the cryonics mailing list some time back.  The
conclusion was that using radiation to infer the structure of the
neurons in a brain in a reasonable amount of time would require enough
radiation to vaporize that brain.  Then the discussion moved on to
nuclear-bomb powered CAT scanners in outer space that record the
results on film that has to be moving by at an astronomical speed so
it doesn't get caught in the blast.  Cremation and immortality, all in
one convenient package.  I find nanotechnology-based approaches more
believable, albeit less spectacular.

To read about this yourself, fetch articles from the cryonet archive
with the words "brain scan" in the subject.  There are 18.  Here's the
not-yet-published FAQ about fetching from the cryonet archive:

What is a cryomsg?  How do I fetch one?

   There has been a cryonics mailing list since July 1988.
   Cryomsg's are mostly the archived messages from this mailing list.  

   To get a cryomsg, send mail to kqb@whscad1.att.com with the subject
   "CRYOMSG nnn nnn" where the nnn's are the numbers of the cryomsg's
   you want. Cryomsgs numbers 100, 200, ..., 900 have one line
   summaries of the preceding 100 cryomsg's.  Message number 0000 has
   a top level index, and message number 0001 has the subjects of all
   of the messages.   Message 0004 has a list of cryonics suspension
   organizations and also cryonics-related organizations and publications.
   Message 0005 is entitled "Suggested reference messages for new
   subscribers". 
--
Tim Freeman <tsf@cs.cmu.edu>    CompuServe ID 71045,2267 checked occasionally.
When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun.
Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all.
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From: pcm@cs.brown.edu (Peter C. McCluskey)
Subject: Re: The virtual choice
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 01:38:48 GMT

In article <1992Jul22.113104.21612@hellgate.utah.edu>, tolman%asylum.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman) writes:
|>   It is conceivable that cryonic reanimation would take place in a society
|> short on resources.  The society could opt for reanimation into virtual
|> space- where resource consumption would be extremely low for the newly
|> revived patient.  So it may become a choice- reanimation now into a virtual
|> place, or waiting for a future with more resources- how would you choose?
|> 
|>   Virtual space reanimation means that a person would come back to life and
|> have all of their neurons hooked into a computer system.  A human would only
|> consume energy for driving their brain, and the cost of driving the host
|> computer.  The synthesized experience would be at least as good as todays
|> technology- which can perform with incredible realism in high end systems.
|> Possibly, the synthesis would be as good or better than "reality".

Since reanimating the brain appears to be the most difficult aspect of cryonics,
it seems silly to reanimate it biologically while reanimating the rest of the
body virtually. Why not go all the way and upload the frozen brain directly
into a computer?
-- 
         hardcore signature virus: "As a juror in a Trial by Jury, 
         you have the right, power and duty to acquit the defendant 
                 if you judge the law itself to be unjust."
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics