| Set up a facility in the Arctic? |
The lower external temperature makes very little difference to
the boil off of cryogens. Access, staffing and management would be much more expensive. |
| Set up a facility in orbit or on a distant moon or planet where it is very cold? |
Although no cryogen is needed, the technology does not yet
exist to make this possible or economic. It is unlikely ever to be economic
during the period before reanimation becomes practicable. |
| Set up a facility in a legislature more favourable than the United States? |
Although less litigious legislatures do exist, they tend to be
less stable and US style litigation is becoming more and more prevalent in the world everywhere. |
| Set up a facility where I <ie the enquirer> live — I am sure
lots of people will flock to it? |
There are only two major facilities in the world and there must
be a reason for this paucity. They are situated in the USA and are widely spaced from each other. |
| Insist members move to live near the facility, or come and stay there when they are dying? |
This was tried briefly once by another organisation and it was not
successful. Most people are aware that cryonics is not certain to work and
it would be silly to give up their existing lives when that is all they have.
Most people prefer to die in their own homes amongst familiar surroundings
and people. Also it is not easy to immigrate into the USA. |
| Set up <enquirer suggests a project> and ask members to give money towards it? |
If the project is inexpensive then the proposer can probably afford
to do it himself at his own expense. People often feel that they are spending
enough on their life insurance premiums to afford any more. It is usually best
for any excess to be given to the cryonics organisation generally for them to
decide how to use it. Overfunding the cryopreservation fee is usually the most
popular method of providing extra funding. Anyone wishing to give time, expertise
or money to CI can learn more about it by clicking here. |
| Set up a conference at <enquirer suggests a venue> and CI send staff to speak there? |
Cryonics has been around since the 1960s and has received publicity out of
all proportion to those already interested. Despite that, the number involved is
still minuscule. By all means have local meetings and conferences, but it is not
worth the time and money of CI staff to spend days traveling and speaking. But if y
ou are convinced enough about your venue to offer tens of thousands of dollars, plus
expenses, I am sure CI can find a speaker. |
| Run our own life insurance company? |
There are very expensive regulatory burdens on life insurance companies.
They can afford them because they have thousands, even millions of customers. CI
would never have that many, and therefore it would be uneconomic to spend money
on compliance with the regulations. The laws are widely drafted to catch similar
proposals that may look at first sight not to be life insurance. |
| Pay a successful public relations company to promote cryonics? |
Cryonics has an enormous amount of free publicity in relation to the
number of people signed up. In fact it is probably the greatest attractor of
publicity of any minority activity ever. For an example of publicity,
please click here. |
| Offer comissions to sell memberships? |
Comission based selling has a bad name generally with the public. To
associate this with cryonics which is viewed with extreme suspicion is not a good idea. |
| Employ a paid professional Webmaster? |
A website capable of providing information need not be complicated.
Fancy presentation also means slow download times, which can be frustrating for some readers. |
| Try and get famous people interested? |
They are very unlikely be willing to spend the time evaluating cryonics
personally, and any assistant is going to find it less demanding on his own time
to dismiss the idea out of hand. |
| Involve the Roman Catholic Church? |
Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead and told his followers to do
the same. Although the Roman Catholics' views on individual life appear very
similar to cryonicists', there are plenty of people in that organisation
who would disagree. It is unlikely as an organisation ever to agree on something as radical as cryonics. |
| Involve a controversial but powerful head of state? |
This would probably not be successful for reasons already stated,
but if it was and (s)he was cryopreserved, then the facility would become the target of dissidents. |
| Euthanase and cryopreserve terminally sick people? |
At present the legal difficulties outweigh the advantages. |
| Use freeze-drying or chemical preservation (plastination)? |
Although this could be better than nothing, a lot of the problems
would be similar. Many of the risks of cryonics are at the front end, ie with
the law and society and getting the person frozen under best conditions. These
risks would be the same with other methods. The greatest risk then depends on
unknowables in the future. However with these other methods the risks of
destroying irreplaceable information is a great deal larger. |
