The Alcor News Weblog
Cryonics provider Alcor has taken the eminently sensible step of starting up an official blog to better communicate with members, supporters, and the broader healthy life extension community:
For some time now, we have been looking for ways to bring more timely information about Alcor to our members and the public. The lead time for Cryonics magazine is several months, and even the email Alcor News only went out once per month. Furthermore, the email format was limited to short news items, which was often confusing. So, we decided to bite the bullet and join the blog bandwagon. As you can see from the dates on some of the posts, it took a while to work things out, but by doing this we hope to bring up items as they happen, with the space to do them more justice.
Equally sensibly, the folk at Alcor have started off with a few posts worth your time - such as a thought-provoking guest editorial on the future of cryonics. See what you think:
A friend of mine died this winter. He wasn't interested in cryonics, but what he didn't do is not the point of this essay. What he did do has saved uncounted lives, maybe including yours. The way this man went about his life has given me a clue to what I think is a major hidden problem with cryonics....
Cryonics, on the other hand, is in some ways still stuck in the 1960's. It's not popular and still looks like a cult to many people. So far it does not appear to be on its way to having a lasting effect on the world. A handful of people have labored mightily to bring forth a lot of suggestive evidence but not much proof that they can achieve what they plan. Why did EMS succeed while cryonics success has stalled?
Emergency Medical Services have not been around too much longer than cryonics, yet the idea of EMS quickly moved into the mainstream of American life. The most important reason is obvious -- EMTs, paramedics, ambulances, and trauma centers get immediate results. It doesn't take long to prove that the medical model saves more lives than the mortuary model. After 40 years of emergency work, EMS personnel can point to millions of rescued people, living witnesses to the success of the model. It is straightforward, easy to understand, easy to assimilate into your life. Yes, these people will still die anyway, just at older ages, unless technologies like cryonics can intervene. But cryonics has no rescued patients going on television talk shows to show that cryopreservation rescued them, and we won't have any such witnesses for decades at least. "Hey, guys, we can now preserve cells a whole lot better than we did last year," just doesn't have the same effect as living people telling how they were "miraculously" saved by the paramedics.
It is to all our betterment for the provision of cryonic suspension to grow and and succeed as an industry. If you are interested in living a far longer, healthier life, then you should also be interested in the most effective insurance policy against accident or the very real possibility of aging to death before the advent of meaningful anti-aging medical technology. Being vitrified with no great certainty of restoration is only the second worse thing that can happen to you; certain oblivion is worse, after all.