[ExI] chemo-preservation and fund raising

[Max More]

On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 9:32 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>  If chemo-preservation worked that would be great; far cheaper than
> cryonics.
>

I'm way behind on reading email lists and only just caught up to this
one...

No, not "far cheaper". Only modestly cheaper than neurocryopreservation.
This error comes up again and again. The assumption seems to be that a
brain will somehow, magically, get chemically fixed in good time before
critical cellular damage has occurred without any costs being incurred.

In reality, IF we had a remotely workable chemical preservation method --
which we certainly do not for whole human brains (and have no idea how to
achieve, as even Ken Hayworth recently acknowledged when I talked to him at
the Tucson consciousness conference) -- it would do no one any good unless
it could be applied VERY SOON after legal death. That requires the same
kind of standby team and fast response capability crucial to cryonics. And
THAT costs serious money.

The only cost you would save (and only part of that) is the long-term
storage costs. For a neuro patient, this requires only $25,000 (the amount
Alcor puts in the Patient Care Trust Fund for a neuro), which is a trivial
amount when paid for by life insurance. Storing a chemically-preserved
brain would be cheaper, but you would still need to pay something for
security and  storage space.


> The procedure would be a lot more common I would think if there was any
> reason to believe it has promise.


This seems reasonable, but I see little evidence for it. After all, there
is good reason to see cryopreservation (done right, with good response
capabilities) are having plenty of promise, yet only a ridiculously small
fraction of the population has made arrangements. I see no reason to be
more MORE optimistic about chemical preservation. Less so, since that
process destroys viability and requires the considerable additional
assumptions involved in scanning and uploading a personality.

MM

>

-- 
Max More, PhD
Strategic Philosopher
Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader*
http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader
President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation
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