Some time ago John Bull was so kind to ask me to write a presentation of myself for long life. For those who don’t know me yet from my messages on cryonet or the Cryonics Institute mailing list, or didn’t met me on the general meeting in September 2005 at CI, let me introduce myself:

My name is David Verbeke, born in 1977 in Belgium near the French border, and currently living in the city of Gent. From the age of 20 until 25 I owned a pub in the city of Kortrijk, which I sold after five good years. I moved to Gent where I attended some philosophy courses at the University of Gent, what I’m still doing, if I’m not travelling.

Already at a very young age I got interested in astronomy, space travel and future technologies. I remember getting my first telescope at the age of 13, spending lots of nights watching the sky. How did the stars and planets get there, how will it all evolve, and most of all, how will human kind evolve? Already at this very early stage in my life, I found out that science and a scientific way of thinking wasn’t comparable with religion, on the contrary, at least if one wants to be consequent. I wasn’t really afraid of dying - and that is pretty much still the case at this moment - but found it such a pity that I wouldn’t be able to see future developments in techology, space travel, etc... now that we’re on the evening of brake throughs in many fields.

I still recall the day when I encountered a transhumanist site, it was a couple of weeks after I started using the internet. I was so excited to see that my thoughts on human evolution had in fact a name and an organised movement behind it, called transhumanism. My opinion has always been that we should take our evolution in our own hands, and if mankind wants to survive in the long term, it is even necessary. At the same time I found out about cryonics, a revelation to me. I immediately started reading about the experimental concept. I quickly realised that with current techniques used to preserve a human body, chances of success are pretty small, and I still think about it that way. Nevertheless, I decided to get myself a contract, about six months after I first read about cryonics. Although the technique is still rather crude and the chances of succes still small to very small to my opinion, the idea behind it is without any doubt one of the biggest asperations of the human kind. The person - or persons - who came up with the idea give prove of an enormous anticipative mind, and a great intellect. Because the fact is that if one is able to preserve a human body and its neural structures intact, than it is possible to revive that same person in the future. That may be very obvious to cryonicists, but as we all know it’s certainly not to most people. And those who realised this a few decades ago and dared to turn this into an experiment, deserve great respect and admiration.

Although I think cryonics is one of the most challenging and exciting experiments ever - maybe even the most challenging - I stay skeptical. As a member of the skeptical society of Belgium, I think it’s very important we stay critical, and not to think cryonics is thé solution, turning it into a sort of religion of technology. We have to admitt that with current cryonics procedures very complex techniques will be needed in the future to be able to revive a patient, and especially revive him or her with most of the neural structures intact.

Nevertheless if one is in a position to be able to afford a cryonics preservation, we shouldn’t doubt it. As we all know we have nothing to lose except the price of an average car, and we won’t be able to ‘take it with us’. So I only can encourage people who are aware the chance is small, but the chance is there, so go for it.

We should encourage cryonics organisations, and support them. The main objective of cryonics organisations now should be to have a well defined program of goals. These goals should involve serious research on the cryopreservation of the brain and other tissue, and a strict policy as what is desirable to freeze and what not. These aspirations should be clearly formulated in an official statement that should be updated every couple of years and made up by the directors and scientists. Cryonics organisations should explore the possiblity to work together with universities and private reseach foundations. In order to get these opportunites, as I said before, a well designed program - with the primary objective in mind where it all started with, that is to preserve and reanimate ‘human’ life – should be established. Cryonics organisations should not try to preserve the whole world of animals, from hamsters to cats, in order to turn into some kind of weird frozen ‘ark of noah’. Neither should it be their goal to upgrade animals in the future who haven’t self-awareness now, as that is an endless and pointless endeaver, or should brains or bodies that have been stored for months or even longer on dry ice or in other destructive ways be accepted. A clear project should be written down and implemented, with it’s aspirations and it’s limits, to earn credibility in the scientific world and benefit from it, which will certainly be necessary if we want to be succesfull in the end. In that way we can focus on bodies who are stored now and in the future in a ‘reasonable and acceptable state’. We should trust in the great capabilities of nanotechnology in the future, but we should admitt that in some cases too much is simply ‘destroyed and probably even lost’ to be reparable by any future technology.

I hope directors of both cryonics organisations will reflect on my thoughts, because I want exactly the same as every other cryonicist, and that is to meet again in good health in the far future.