From: keithl@klic.rain.com (Keith Lofstrom)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Why not die???
Date: 14 Dec 92 18:35:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: klic.1992Dec14.183537.9663
Organization: Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits

In article <1992Dec14.121240.42619@urz.unibas.ch> spissinger@urz.unibas.ch writes:
>
>What's so bad about dying?
>Isn't more intelligent to accept the inevitable than to start all these
>senseless efforts of cryonics?
>Why should future generations on an overcrowded planet be interested in waking
>up the frozen dead?
>
>--Don't freeze me: cremate me!--
>
>Thomas
>

How about right now?  Go ahead, we won't stop you...  ;-)



Draw your line where you want in the following list.  I draw it between one
and two:

Why should "future generations on an overcrowded planet" be interested in:

1) waking up the frozen dead?
2) waking up the cryonically suspended?
3) performing whole-body cell-level rejuvenation?
4) performing multiple organ transplants?
5) curing genetic diseases?
6) curing terminal viral diseases like AIDS?
7) curing cancer?

or among the things we know how to do, that cost a lot more than cryonics:

 8) performing single organ transplants?
 9) provide support for terminal patients?
10) maintain people in coma?
11) perform heart surgery?
12) provide neonatal care for at-risk infants?


Cryonics is a controversial extension of patient care.  You may wish to
have nothing to do with the patients we are suspending - let them die,
burn them, get them out of your sight - but the fact that you, and
traditional medicine, have given up on them doesn't mean we have to.

These patients aren't "dead" when we suspend them.  Their hearts have
stopped, they are unconcious, and a physician has signed a death 
certificate because current medicine can't reverse what is happening.
A temporary restoration of some life signs, which could be brought 
about by something as simple as CPR,  would only cause needless
agony.  But the patient is still metabolizing glucose, there is still
electrical activity in the brain, and if we could cure the organ failures
that brought the patient to this state, the patient could get up and
walk away.  Cryonics is the best way we know to minimize further
degradation, and transport the patient to the place and time where the
technology exists for a cure.

"Future generations" don't have to be any more interested in cryonics
than current generations are;  although we want to grow cryonics, and
are doing so, all we need for success is a small group left alone to
do it.  Cryonics is a mutual aid group - Doctor Donovan is suspended
by Jerry Leaf, Jerry Leaf is suspended by current Alcor staff, I
may help suspend some of the current Alcor staff.  Some person getting
involved in cryonics in the future will help suspend me, and so forth.
When the technology becomes available to reverse the process, we pop
the stack - the people that suspended me will be brought back, and
help bring me back.  I will help bring back Jerry Leaf and Doctor
Donovan and James Bedford and whoever else is still suspended.
We are paying for this ourselves, with our own work and sweat, and
the money we saved going in.  We won't need your help.

I've seen a number of my friends, relatives, and heros die.  The world
is less because of their loss.  I wouldn't mind saving a few of them,
and I'm going to try.  If you feel that your knowledge, skills, and
capacity for love will be of no use in the future, well, I suppose you
are the best judge of that.  You have my permission to rot.  But wouldn't
you rather be here, 200 years from now, to contradict all those terrible
things we will say about you and your ideas?

-- 
Keith Lofstrom         keithl@klic.rain.com       Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Power ICs
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics