From: kqb@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (kevin.q.brown)
Subject: Future need for cryonics
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 22:31:08 GMT
X-Crossposted-To: cryonics mailing list

[ I have appended three messages from the cryonics mailing list on the
  topic "Future need for cryonics". - KQB ]

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

>Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 00:59:33 CDT
>From: Brian Wowk <wowk@ccu.UManitoba.CA>
>Message-Subject: CRYONICS: Future need for cryonics

Keith Henson:
 
> BTW, I could well be wrong, but my best guess is that far fewer than 
> 10,000 patients will be suspended before they start being revived, and 
> the practice of cryonics is relegated to the history books.  (Arel's 
> estimate is fewer than 500.)
 
        I think this is completely unrealistic.  At present growth rates 
one can conservatively project 500 people in suspension near the turn of 
the century, and 10,000 people in suspension by the year 2010.  Are you 
suggesting that there will be no terminal illnesses left in 20 years?
 
        What about that last great frontier of terminal illnesses?  I 
refer not to aging, but to something even worse: cerebral ischemic 
injury.  In the United States alone over 100,000 people every year 
suffer cardiac arrest in sudden, uncontrolled circumstances resulting in 
hours of warm ischemic injury.  This is the kind of injury that only 
*mature* nanotechnology has any hope of fixing.  I for one do not expect 
to see this level of nanotechnology inside of a hundred years.
 
        Cerebral ischemic injury may be an extreme example, yet it alone 
is sufficient to insure a continuing need for cryonic suspension deep 
into the 21st century.  The number of patients in suspension will 
probably peak in the millions, not thousands.
 
                                                --- Brian Wowk     

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

>From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com
>Message-Subject: CRYONICS
>Date: Thu,  1 Oct 92 16:33:41 PDT

Brian Wowk writes:

>Keith Henson:
> 
>> BTW, I could well be wrong, but my best guess is that far fewer than 
>> 10,000 patients will be suspended before they start being revived, and 
>> the practice of cryonics is relegated to the history books.  (Arel's 
>> estimate is fewer than 500.)
> 
>        I think this is completely unrealistic.  At present growth rates 
>one can conservatively project 500 people in suspension near the turn of 
>the century, and 10,000 people in suspension by the year 2010.  Are you 
>suggesting that there will be no terminal illnesses left in 20 years?

Brian, I worked the numbers recently and I think I came up with a 
very rough doubling time of three years for suspension patients, 
which is roughly the same as the number who are signed up.  For 
500 by the turn you are projecting a factor of 20 in under 8 
years, and another factor of 20 in the next ten years.   Even a 
factor of 16 is four doublings in 8 years, or one doubling every 
two years.  (I am using Alcor numbers because the base and growth 
rates of the other organizations are much smaller.)  Is doubling 
suspension patients every two years reasonable?  For Alcor, that 
would mean suspending *25* over the next 24 months.  Well----it
could happen, I suppose.  If it seems likely, finding Alcor a new 
location becomes critical, since we would really have them wedged 
in with another 25 in that building.  It seems difficult for the 
number of suspension patients go up at a faster exponential rate 
than the signed up ones--for very long anyway. 

All Alcor suspensions except for the last three are listed in the 
July _Cryonics_.  Someone might want to run the data through a
regression program, but don't give too much weight to the end 
data points, there are *no* patients on our watch list at the 
moment; statistically, I expect about one more this year (which 
means I would not be surprised by zero, one, or two.

The end of cryonics (not last out, but when people quit going in) 
is harder to project, but interest in nanotechnology is growing 
rapidly, as is the money spent on things which contribute to 
progress in this area.  Current projections by those most 
knowledgeable (which everyone admits are just informed guesses) 
centers around 2013.  That would give us 21 years or about 7 
doublings--in round numbers about a hundred times the current 
number of 25.  Delay nanotech by another six to eight years, and 
you do indeed get to 10k patients.

Re cerebral ischemic injury, I would assume that even fairly 
early nanotechnology would be up to keeping your heart going. 

Exponential growth projections depend rather critically on our 
assumptions.  Well, we shall see. 

Keith Henson

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

>Date: 02 Oct 92 03:39:44 EDT
>From: Thomas Donaldson <73647.1215@CompuServe.COM>
>Message-Subject: Re: cryonics: #1231 - #1232

Keith:

I'm basically happy with your reply to Perry Metzger except on one point,
which I think is WAY too pollyannish. You claim that only a few people will
ever be suspended. I think that's quite quite wrong. True, as time passes
we can expect the RATE PER YEAR of suspensions to fall off; also true, its
very unlikely that we will continue to use simple freezing (well, compar-
atively simple) into the indefinite future, 1000, 2000 years on. But I
doubt very much that we will EVER escape a need to store badly damaged 
people until some future time when we will have the tools and the know-
ledge needed to restore them. You are talking about perfection there, and
true perfection just isn't going to happen. For every form of protection
you can devise for our identity (and therefore our life) there will always
be the rare fiendish accident that breaches it --- and so damages some
unfortunate person in ways for which no method of reversal is known at
the time.
				Best
					Thomas Donaldson
Xref: sparky sci.cryonics:579 news.answers:3228