This is amusing from a 1960's science fiction comic book point of view...
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=8257c33a4b7dcb06870f5984fefc09a0&showtopic=33311

There's nothing wrong with this kind of speculation and imagination in my view. I'd like to see LP's ideas portrayed in a graphic novel or comic book. It's certainly a potential basis for a science fiction movie-- and the comic would serve as a story board.

He did say at one point he was going to work for Jordan Sparks, doing what he did not say. A RUP doing dental work? (just kidding!)

Many possibilities come to mind as to why he has stopped posting here of late (including maybe feeling bullied by more aggressive posters), but we don't know.

Luke, give us an update? I'd love to see Oregon Cryonics become a viable provider.

Cheers,

FD

I am a support tech at an open source dental practice management software company that Jordan has built. (See:http://www.opendental.com/) I think the decrease in posting frequency has something to do with the fact that I am using my creative and problem-solving skills at work on a routine basis now, so my brain is not overwhelmingly bored at the end of the day. It is also a longer work week as it is a full time position, so I don't have as much time to spend writing forum posts. (I tend to spend a lot of time on most of my posts.)

From what I've talked to Jordan about (I tend to focus on work while at work so this isn't all that often) the plan for Oregon Cryo is to stick with neuro exclusively, and try to build the local community in that geographical location. There are plenty of health-science related educational and career opportunities in that part of Oregon so there's potential for a lot of really brainy people who actually know what they are doing to get moved in there, or even be recruited from the local populace. Jordan believes the temperate weather will make it easier to build this kind of community in Oregon than in Arizona. I expect the focus in Oregon will be primarily on people who are actually willing to move to the area (especially during retirement or illness), rather than remote services to all areas of the nation.

I hope lots of enthusiastic, competent, rational people will consider moving to the Salem area to join us in the coming years. The more numerous the people involved, the better it will be for economics of scale as well as the sooner it will become mainstream. I think that most of cryonics' problems are related, one way or another, to the picayune scale it is performed on today.

In the long run I think it best to have a moderate sized stabilization-capable community in each geographical region, with a smaller number of relatively large-scale storage centers. Depending how things work out, I may be inclined to travel and help establish competent stabilization options in more regions. I am not comfortable with the idea of waiting for the arrival of people from Florida or Arizona, and I don't think anyone should be... If you fall deathly sick or are getting old, your most rational option is to fly straight to Scottsdale or Detroit. Hopefully Salem will be another good area for this in the near future.

....to right-to-die. So, Luke... Use the force... of deception. Your new boss has done a good job on that and now i expect you'll follow in his footsteps.

For anyone who doesn't know the history of my investigation into Sparks and his Oregon/Salem outfit-- there is an overt and obvious method involved in his operations involving NOT talking about the right-to-die. In inner circles in cryonics, this is because the behaviorists-- like computer experts and others-- think that if you associate cryonics with right-to-die (which is consider legal murder)-- that cryonics would be associated with that. Mike Darwin's 1992 murder of his friend is a case in point. Hugh Hixon's reference to murder in the Johnson tapes is another.

The better way to deal with cryonics murder and euthenasia murder in general is to frame it as legalized murder-- like war for example. We could frame cryonics as a war on death and the paradox is that you have to self-murder or be murdered near what is thought to be the end of your life in order to maintain cellular integrity. Avoiding the idea that right-to-die is a type of murder is philosophically problematic. The intent in right-to-die is to kill a person... which technically is murder.

My own view is that we ought to be doing the opposite and ratcheting up the EXTREME life support systems-- with cost only limit. But eventually, if you can keep a lot people alive on extreme life support, the costs would fall. I can imagine an medical building where we house 1000 heads-- all talking to one another-- about their plans for reintegration onto their bodies.

I'd support a cryonics policy of right-to-extreme-life support. Here's a comic book where living heads are throwing themselves around...



Here's a patient (head only) on extreme life support from a 1950's sf movie...



Ikaria does extreme life support-- cryonics should hook up with this operation and forget Oregon

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=ikaria&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

ITU or intensive therapy unit would be where cryos would end up

http://www.ukhtb.org/en/Cells%20and%20Tissues/Glossary

A fairly recent public discussion took place about Terry Shaivo who was allowed to die when her only extreme life support was a feeding tube...

http://www.nevadalife.org/pressroom/pr050325.html

I would have thought the right to extreme life would be hotly debated by now. Dying is easy. It's staying alive that's an exploration into higher tech and the future. And cryonicsists ought to be leading the way on that.

Thanks for making my day XD

36 years in a vegetative state, force fed in a hospital:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8417549.stm

Somewhere in the universe there has likely evolved a planet where technology has advanced such that human bodies can be kept alive forever. There are no sentient ones left. Only billions of vegetative ones, all being kept alive by robots programmed to "do no harm".

Ain't it ever,

FD

...nanotech, digital memory files, fresh neurons etc. isn't it? At least it was the last time I checked my science fiction stack of books. I don't know. Maybe you're reading the wrong science fiction.

I don't know much about India, except it is one of the 4 largest powers on Terra by some measurements. Who funds the force-feeding of a person such as that for 36 years is a question, and probably leads eventually to less food in the mouth of some starving infant.

Pretty evident, though, that sort of care is way more costly than topping off a dewar for a few decades or centuries. "Who is going to pay for it?" raises its ugly ear. There are unmentioned other expenses, such as that of cleaning up what comes out the other end of the human

Good luck on your crusade to promote organizations (where are they?) which will keep you alive-alive rather than frozen-alive until sci-fi scenarios of medical advances such as you depict, arrive on the scene. Cryo orgs, though, do what they do, and need vast improvements on that. Don't expect them to diversify into other avenues of life-preservation, until they can at least deliver what they already claim to do.

Happy Holidays,

FD

I don't get it. Cryonics is not about dying, it is about staying alive.

If you are trying to say we should try to legalize premortem cryonics by citing war as a precedence for legal homicide, I disagree. Premortem cryonics should be legalized by declaring the person not dead, in my opinion.

If it is to be called death, it needs a separate legal category. Brain death and cardiorespiratory death have their own separate categories, after all. Perhaps there could be a category for "preservative death" that recognizes the intent and potential to reverse the condition.

In hypothermic bloodless surgery, is the patient alive or dead? He's neither. He's not in "preservative death" either. He's in suspended animation. Suspended animation is just that... neither alive or dead. THAT is the category you're looking for. Cryonics is extreme exprerimental suspended animation. That's why Saul named his company Suspended Animation Inc.

The battles in cryonics are not as much about the technology sometimes, as about the nomeclature. Semantic framing is a discipline that deals with groups of words that address an issue. In this case, cryonics, we should adopt some the forces in society at large when manuevering to describe out own affairs. It doesn't do us any good to repeat the mantra that a cryonaut isn't dead. Legally, he's dead. Drexler made the distinction that the structure is still intact so that therefore we might be able to reanimate. Drexler admitted that function is ceased. That's what dead means-- that function has ceased.

The fact that cells are still alive after declaration of death is of interest to us. So we should say that. We're dealing with what is more popularly understood as suspended animation. But the hypothermia people absconded with that recently so now we have to talk about extreme suspended animation. You can't say the guy is alive when he's in suspended animation. You can say he's potentially alive, depending on future technology.

You can't say like Alcor does-- that we preserve life. There is no life preservation going on here... in the sense that people understand it. WE think we're doing that, on our optimistic days, but most of us has pessimistic days too. So we're not preserving life-- we're TRYING to preserve life. There's a big difference. You don't advertise the idea that you're preserving life when in fact you're TRYING to do that.

So what we do is experimental... it's extreme.. and it's suspended animation-- like the hypothermic surgery guys only at a lower temperature for a longer time-- so our adjectives (modifieres) have to establsh that... Experimental extreme suspended animation.. it's experimental because it might turn out that it is NOT suspended animation after all... it might not work. EESA, in short would be the technical name for cryonics.

EESA candidates in Oregon would be able to decide, on their own, when to take the EESA option. For EESA people in Oregon to say "we don't want to talk about that"-- is intellectually dishonest and has more to do with them protecting themselves legally and for the public relations aspects. But they're IN orgegon-- and NOT in 49 other states. DeWofls moved TO Oregon. On what basis? Chance? someone said it's a nice state. Bogus argument. What's really going on is cryos (EESA people are excited at the prospect of immortality gained by choosing when they deanimate.

i

I don't talk about it because it's not useful or relevant. It's a decision to be discussed with the patient's physician. Only after legal pronouncement of death should cryonics representatives become involved. Any discussion whatsoever of assisted suicide to aid cryonics would not be ethical.

Of course, you can feel free to keep talking to yourself about it if you want.

Eventually, some cryonics-oriented person (AKA cryonicist) will decide to move to Oregon and make use of the Death With Dignity Act. Whether a customer of Alcor, CI, or Oregon Cryonics (when it starts providing actual public services), will that hinder such a person from moving on to the chosen cryomecca, or will it help?

I'd guess we won't know until someone actually tries to do it. Perhaps we will get better case reporting on it than from some recent ones, like the one SA did for Alcor?

Reluctant to be a beta-tester, much less an alpha one,

Merry Holidays,

FD

It doesn't make sense to get entangled in that mess unnecessarily. As you say, cryonics is only relevant after legal death. Getting involved before that could indeed be unethical, or at least perceived as such. Outsiders would likely view any discussion of preservation for possible future technological interventions as coercive or manipulative. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if many cryonicists would object to it as well. After all, many of us are practical enough to realize that the chances of success are small, if not entirely unknown.

where did this concern for ethics all of a sudden pop up? Whatever happened to good old science fiction and speculation? Are you turning this forum into a public relations blitz-- pretending that cryonicists don't advise other cryonicists to go ahead and drink the hemlock now to get preserved rather than wait and allow their brain to turn to jello?

Public relations concerns, ethics and ass covering are boring. Let's get with the program here and deal with reality... which is-- as a cryonicist-- it might be okay to accelerate the deanimation process as a way to preserve higher brain integrity for the long run. What about THOSE ethics? What about the ethics of avoiding open discussion of this which might lead to someone NOT taking advantage of the situation thus potentially realizing their goal of immortality? Or is the ass covering strictly a legal cover generated by fears of reference to 1992?

As a dentist, I deal with the ethics of treatment on a daily basis. I have had training on this issue, and I have honed it for 10 years. I have always considered this to be an important part of the cryonics approach. Sorry you find it so boring, but I won't approach it any other way. That's not a dishonest reply. One of the biggest reasons for the government imposing regulations on an industry is to force ethical behavior. It makes a lot of sense to follow medical ethical guidelines. If you crave a more pragmatic answer, then think of it as the best way to avoid punishment.

You've opted out of the real discussion about cryonics in Oregon as a right-to-die state because you're being pragmatic-- or feel you have to be. The real discusison is centered on philosphy, not pragmatism. Good luck with that. In the long run, things have to line up philosophically, so at best, pragmatism is a temporary state of affairs. The real pragatism IS the philosophical position.

It's absurd to try to distance cryonics from death-with-dignity. Sparks won't talk about it not because it's not relevent but rather because it's dangerous to do so in the face of potential regulation of cryonics. Discussion of assisted suicide for cryonics is completely ethical from a cryonics point of view and all cryonicists know it. Even Ralph Merkle knows it-- that's why his page is up first on google under "death with dignity act" + cryonics...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=%22death+with+dignity+act%22+%2B+cryonics&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Sparks claims that his "professional medical status" prevents him from considering advising cryonicists to suicide but he's only a dentist for Pete's sake. I think dentistry is important of course, but it's not as if he's a medical professional ethicist/philosophy who has done brain surgery or transplants where life might have been on the line in every operation. Sparks should be free to advise dying cryonicists to hurry it up and "die"-- for the sake of the cryonics process since that would give him better neuronal integrity. If honesty is ethical, then that's the ethical direction to take.

And if you frighten me, you almost certainly frighten the average person on the street.

I am of course aware that there are huge barriers to what is really likely to actually happen any time soon, especially if I am waiting for other people to do it. But let's face it, many of the barriers to action are caused by lack of imagination. If even a relatively small cryodome were constructed, to house just a few million people, the cost would be brought to a fraction of what it currently is per person. If we were to make one for a few billion people that fractional cost would be even smaller.

But even if the cost were the same at larger scales as it is on a smaller scale, it wouldn't utterly swamp the human economy -- it would be a significant yet manageable impact, even if new patients are added for several centuries. The yearly cost of enough LN2 to keep a single dewar cold is probably in the $500/month or $6000/year range. It is far less than caring for a terminal patient by any other means. During that time they don't need food or medical care, and their existence causes far less pollution than a single living child or pet dog in the western world.

If being cared for as a terminal patient for 100 years were necessary to get access to technology that makes you young and whole again, wouldn't you do it? Of course you would. Storing everyone in the world, even at the $6000/year price range, should be considered morally imperative. It just happens to be the case that storing everyone in the world would in reality reduce the cost to $6/year or less.

The problem is that the "dead" are excluded from most people's consciousness in much the same way that starving orphans in remote countries are. People who will fight to keep a brain-dead person like Terri Schaivo animate could care less about the fate of someone who has been declared dead by medical criteria and cooled to -130C. This is due to widespread ignorance in my opinion.