Comments From Cornwall
by John de Rivaz
Introduction:
This file contains the text of a monthly column that appeared in The Immortalist, a magazine published by The Immortalist Society <ettinger@aol.com>
Wherever possible source information has been given, and no additional information is usually available if you write in.
January 1993
Financiers Miss Growth at Deprenyl Animal Health Inc
Writing in his third quarter annual report dated 30 September 1992, Dr Morton Schulman, M.D., criticised the market's valuation of his company, in view of the substantial progress that has been made. The operating results for the quarter had been extremely encouraging, both with respect to the Anipryl development programme and the company's patent development activities.
The results from the first pilot study evaluating Anipryl therapy in Canine Cushing's Syndrome have become available, with a statistically significant positive outcome. An expanded study has now been implemented, and the "first pivotal trial" is scheduled for 1993.
University of Toronto studies have shown that Anipryl may assist older dogs suffering from cognitive dysfunction. Again more results are expected in 1993, including "assistance dogs".
An ongoing study in New Mexico has already shown that Anipryl increases immune response in old dogs.
The company claims that its development programme for Anipryl has cost a lot less than comparable vetinary programmes.
I repeat that if this company can produce a product that extends the lifespan of dogs, then the political and legal implications for life extension in humans will be revolutionary in effect. As the lifespan of the average dog is 15-20 years, improvement will be easily noticeable within the human lifespan. Life extension will have been demonstrated to work. In addition, deprenyl may be of benefit even if given to older animals, so we won't even have to wait 15 years to ge the first results. The first dogs to live to 25 or more in good health may be alive today!
I refer readers to an excellent article in Canadian Cryonics News for Autumn 1992, no 19, by Ben Best. He details the career of Dr Morton Schulman, and even described how he met him for a prescription of Deprenyl. Dr Schulman has always known his own mind, and the article makes fascinating reading; how he fell in and out of favour with various professions and institutions as his diverse campaigns coincided or opposed their members' interests and aspirations.
Canadian Cryonics News is about 20 pages long and appear four times a year. It is by far the best of the newsletters put out by non-US cryonics organisations, and it is disappointing that only 22 people in the United States read it. You can add to that number by subscribing yourself, and the cost is only $10 for one year. ($14 outside Canada and the US). Another well researched and useful article in issue 10 is a discussion of the chance of sudden death occurring to an individual and the implications for cryonicists. (Address Canadian Cryonics News PO Box 788, Station "A", Toronto, Canada M5W 1G3
Laser Scanning System for Dental Surgery
An article in New Scientist 19/26 December described a prototype system that will make dental surgery more efficient.
As he cuts into your teeth the surgeon, instead of looking at what he is doing, will view the progress of the drill on a video monitor hooked to a computer. This will receive data from a laser scanning system fixed around the tooth being drilled.
The advantage of this system is that the dentist can see inside the teeth as he drills. Previously, he took an X- ray and based his entire procedure on this one image. Unlike X-rays, laser light is not ionising, and therefore can be used with safety. The computer can make three dimensional images that can be rotated and viewed from different angles.
The system will also be of use for restorative works such as crowns, giving a far better result than plaster moulds.
The laser system works because the light is scattered more by decayed areas than healthy tissue. Using a light whose wavelength is sensitive to blood, the system can also detect dead teeth for extraction. Dead teeth are identifiable by the fact that they have no blood circulation.
Teeth are a hard but porous structure, so the laser light can get through them. However it is said not to be a complete replacement for X- rays, because they are better at detecting existing fillings. (I don't understand why - I should have thought that mercury amalgam would not be porous and therefore block laser light completely.)
International Sensor Corporation, Pittsburgh, is now developing a commercial system. Trials are due to start in about a year.
Schering Plough Forecasts 20% Growth for the year
Pharmaceuticals company Schering Plough forecast that its earning per share would grow by 18 to 20% in the next year, in its quarterly report dated 6 November.
Domestic sales of prescription pharmaceuticals grew by 5% during the quarter and exported products grew 29% in real terms, or 41% including the effects of currency movements. However eye care and OTC products declined by 11%.
In his address to shareholders dated 30 September, 1992 Alan G. Carr, President of H & Q Life Sciences made a number of political statements of relevance to the progress of his company.
On the US economy generally, he pointed to signs that the recession may be ending, but expressed concern at the state of the banking system and the state of consumer confidence in the light of declining house prices. However the incentives to repay debt rather than consume will result in lower inflation. Owning common stocks will also be more remunerative than investing in fixed interest. "After approximately 20 years of US households having been nett sellers of equities, data suggests that in 1992 households were significant net buyers," he said.
Mr Carr suggests that in 1993 we may see the American economy afflicted by attempts to deliver on Presidential campaign promises, "but taxing upper income families in some kind of wealth redistribution scheme doesn't seem likely to produce enough revenue to make a real difference." (Presumably he means to the American people as a whole - obviously punitive taxation will make a difference to the people involved. I call this concentration of wealth - into government control, so that government officials can claim all the credit for "giving" it to some cause they consider worthy. If it was aging research or even cryonics we would think it worthy too!)
Containment of healthcare costs is already in the price of most common stocks in this field. However Mr Carr and his fellow directors would like to see efforts in other areas of cost containment. He doubts whether the government would consider tort reform to limit medical malpractice awards, but that is really what the system needs. The administration of the healthcare system in order to comply with regulations is estimated to be as much as 20% of its operating costs. And it contributes to 30% of the overall rate of cost increase! A doctor is quoted as having to deal with more than 30 different regulatory bodies, each with different rules, whilst running his practice.
H & Q Life Sciences is a Massachusetts business trust registered as a closed-end management investment company. It has a diversified portfolio of stocks in the health care sector. They see the sector as offering above average investment returns, more through innovative processes than the price rises that have dominated it in the past.
My comment is that this could be a good vehicle for investors who believe that science will advance in this field yet who would prefer not to choose their own common stocks in which to invest. At the time of writing the share price is around $15.
If the predicted progress is not made, then this will probably also mean that the cryonics and life extension promises will not be met, so you will never be aware of your investment failing! There are probably other funds with similar perspectives, and as always my advice is never to put all your investment eggs in one basket.
Prudential-Bache Predicts Mutual Funds Replace Bank Deposits
In its annual forecast for 1993, Prudential Bache Inc., the brokerage firm, predict that increasing public awareness of financial matters may result in fixed interest cash deposits falling from favour as a means of saving.
George F. Salem, CFA, says that there is $1.5 trillion in demand deposits at banks and this represents 56% of all bank deposits. If banks do not offer mutual fund accounts, then there is a real risk that this hugs sum of money will pass into brokerage accounts and mutual funds. He refers to this as "the bank's ticking time bomb".
However he argues that the banks are in a strong position to move their clients into their own new mutual fund accounts rather than lose them, and in the long term he sees the change as beneficial to banks' profits.
He points out that investor sophistication is a one way process - investor's knowledge and requirements won't decline. As America's "baby boomers" reach retirement, they will have definite financial goals in mind, and will not be content to accept the very low returns from fixed interest bank deposits as opposed to mutual funds or brokerage accounts.
He seems to suggest that the American middle classes have been contented with low returns on their savings until now. I would comment that maybe the cryonics organisations - all of them - have had this attitude, and in their funding arrangements for new members will have to bear in mind that people are much more aware of how money can work for them. They are going to be more resistant to being pushed into low yielding life policies and the suchlike when their deathist friends are making much more from their unfettered investments.
However there are risks with stock market investing. One has to allow for a "worst case scenario", ie realisation is required when the market has just fallen.
But there are still products available for those willing to pay professional fees. One such is a mixture between fixed interest and futures. The volatility of futures - essentially gambles on the future prices of stocks - means that fortunes can be made and lost with very little capital. So the mixture invests say 80% in fixed interest and 20% in futures. The downside is limited, whereas the upside is still available as a result of the amplifying effect of the futures contract - the underlying stock is never purchased.
Readers may be wondering why I have dragged "professional costs" into this. The reason is simple - there are very heavy costs involved with dealing with futures. However a fund can reduce these by increasing the volume per deal. There have been a few attempts to launch these funds in the UK, at the moment with limited success. A recent example did not attract enough funds to attract the more favourable dealing costs for futures, and has only offered its investors a deposit return rate!
Unprecedented Chances for Investors in Stocks
There is an important point that I would like to make. Most adults alive today have known markets fettered by massive global military spending, by two world wars and then the cold war. This spending may create "defence stocks" that have been good investments for some, but their products create no real wealth. Indeed, the two world wars represented a terrific loss of wealth to the world as a whole.
I see the two main factors emerging as we move into the 21st century:
1. A substantial shift of spending into projects that multiply the wealth of the world as a whole.
2. AIDS will make a substantial cut in the dependent populations of the "third world", reducing their drain on the world's economy.
Either a cure will be developed for AIDS, or a sector of the population with a natural immunity will appear as carriers unaffected by the disease. But whichever of these is to appear as the end of the AIDS saga, the disease will end the overpopulation doomsday scenario. By the time the human population growth recovers, we will have access to space colonisation. It will be a long time before humanity can overpopulate the entire universe!
These two factors will make a profound shift in the movements of world stock markets. Two heavy downward pressures are being removed.
We have no model for the effects of population reduction. However it is fair to say that with growing unemployment and increasing automation everywhere the world's economy does not need so many people in order to grow.
We do have a model for a low military costs economy, and that is Japan and West Germany, who were forbidden military expenditure after World War 2. Everyone knows how strong those economies are.
Personally I had thought that the German economy would enter a period of weakness as a result of having to absorb Eastern Germany following the collapse of its highly regulated (communist) government. I would liked to have been able to borrow funds in Deutchmarks feeling secure that the DM would fall and I would make a profit. Fortunately for me in this case, my difficulties in getting good deals with professional meant that I never made the transaction.
The enormous strength of the German economy was shown by the fact that it appears to have swallowed the East whole without so much as a hiccough!
Japanese stocks sell on a much higher multiple compared to others. The returns, ie dividend, on stocks seems to be a national phenomenum. In the UK, you get about 5%, the US about 3%, and in Japan the return is negligible. If Japan is the model for the rest of the world, then dividend yield will have no more importance than as a comparison between stocks. It will almost not be worth writing out the check except on very large holdings, and indeed dividends may disappear altogether with stocks being compared on a price/earnings ratio basis only.
If you are used to fixed interest, your 3% per year, then you may be forgiven for thinking it is a retrograde step to accept no interest! However what you get instead is the prospect of growth. You may buy a stock for $30 a share at the beginning of the year and sell it for $80 at the end of the year. Or you could keep a stock for decades and see an original investment grow from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. Technology stocks that are successful can have a double figure percentage growth rate for decades. The smart operator knows exactly when to buy and sell. The professional will work to a short timescale and get a return of over 30% a year on his funds, regardless of whether markets as a whole rise or fall. This takes a lot of hard work, but the average investor can do quite well by picking good stocks and "riding the market".
Up to now, riding the market has been risky, but during the next few decades as the world moves into a different trading routine, as outlined by my two points earlier (less military spending and population reduction), the general movement must be up.
This is unless something totally unexpected happens, such as an asteroid impact, or a mutation making AIDS infectious by an aerosol, like colds and flu. However such doomsday scenarios are likely to result in an end to the cryonics and life extension programs as well, so trying to invest around them is a pointless exercise.
The bad news is that there are a large number of people "trading" and receiving money without creating wealth. These people are heavily represented in the legislature, and their influence and drain on the world economy could grow like a cancer and kill it. The purest example is almost trivial, but it illustrates the point. Over the past ten years or so I have received from time to time copies of a so-called opportunity to wealth. It is called various things, but is best known as The Edward L. Green Letter.
It consist of several sheets of paper stapled at one corner, urging you to buy four products at $10 each from four names. You then cross off the top name, move the others up, and add yours at the bottom. You then sell the $10 product, which is usually a "report" typed on one side of a single sheet with a title like How to Succeed in Business Without Work or some suchlike. Most of the sheets are highly persuasive exhortations to join the scheme.
The fact the Edward L Green's letter continues to circulate, despite it being almost common knowledge that the scheme does not in fact work, means that people are wasting their money on postage and printing for decades in the forlorn hope of getting something for nothing. Like a computer virus or cancer, this letter is almost impossible to stop and may well survive for centuries. There have been imitators, but this one seems to be the most persistent.
Alright; this is trivial and the sums involved small. But what is not trivial is the rise of what Professor Richard Dawkins calls "Fat Cat Professions". A case in point is computer virus experts. Unknown until very recently, these people charge large sums of money to check computer installations are free of computer viruses, (programs designed to destroy computer data that pass when infected disks are copied). No one knows who the writers and disseminators of these computer viruses are, but I should imagine that virus experts are also amongst their number!
The established professions no doubt would resent being compared to Edward L. Green or computer virus writers. However as society becomes more sophisticated new drains will appear - professions who make the problems that they are then paid to cure.
Money is an important medium for transferring wealth, and with its invention came lawyers and accountants. The international mailing system produced the chain letter (Edward L. Green), and computers the virus creator/clearer.
Nanotechnology looks very exploitable in this respect, as it creates a new medium. It has the potential to create unlimited wealth, but will this wealth be spread amongst humanity, or will it be swallowed up by one of Dawkins' Fat Cats?
Shifts in Religious Observance
An article in The Financial Times of 24 December observed that Christmas was chosen to be on 25 December not because it was the anniversary of the birth of Christ but because that was a date used by previous religions to celebrate mid winter.
It went on to discuss the popularity of various religions, and commented that by the turn of the century adult affiliation of the Anglican Church will have dropped to one and a half million people. This is a little less than the projected membership of the Roman Catholic Church. However the number of members of Islam are rising, and by 2000 they will roughly equal Anglicans.
The importance of this to cryonics is that Christianity has been broadly neutral or even sympathetic to cryonics. Islam is an unknown in this respect. It is known that it tends to worship death - dictators and other authoritarians have used the concept that death in battle is a sure ticket to paradise to make their people sacrifice their lives for their country. It could be that a worldwide decline of Christianity in favour of a more bloodthirsty faith that makes a greater virtue out of "axekneeling" could be a problem that cryonics societies ought to consider protecting themselves against now, before it is too late.
If there is someone who reads The Immortalist who knows something about how Islam views cryonics, it would be worthwhile for him to put his knowledge to paper for the other readers to consider this point.
February 1993
Cornish Scene this month waa computer image taken from a video recording of Cliff Cottage. This was owned by a smuggler in the late middle ages, who had a passage to the house from the beach. In addition, he mounted a gun on nearby Battery Point to shoot at customs boats that dared enter his cove.
I have recently been mentioning other people interested in life extension, such as Morton Schulman and Milan Panic. Although they are not as vociferous about extending life as people like Saul Kent, they have actually raised a lot of money, millions of dollars in fact, for their researches. Previous items in this column have detailed the fund raising activities of these men, and indeed they have come into a certain amount of criticism from the financial professionals for their methods. Dr Schulman has been accused of making money in his companies by investment rather than developing the selegiline products specified, and Milan Panic has been accused of manipulating the markets.
As a shareholder of companies run by these two men I haven't anything to complain about. But then I have been a long term holder rather than trying to make a quick profit out of market movements. It has been suggested that the financiers who complain are those that have been outwitted by Mr Panic and lost their money. If Mr Panic could make money by these machinations, then presumably any shareholder thinking alongside him could make similar profits.
Trans Time, of course, has also made money from floating companies such as Bio Time on the stock market.
One ought to look at why Schulman and Panic have raised so much more money than any of the cryonics organisations, or indeed the Life Extension Foundation, MegaHealth Society and similar groups.
I may be wrong, but I think that it is because they have offered participation by selling shares rather than seeking donations or merely selling products or services. Furthermore, they have sold shares on a recognised stock market, rather than privately. This means that people can if they wish buy and sell them at will, realising profits and losses to enable capital tax planning.
Most people attracted to immortalism are individualists, and regard taxation as slavery, and they only reason they pay it is summed up in one word (by Bob Brakeman) "Guns". If you don't pay, the government come after you with guns. Tax planning by incorporating losses on speculative shares, investing in something you believe in, is far better than tax planning by making tax-deductible donations. Shares only give a chance of a financial loss.
In fact, certain inbuilt factors in stock markets make it the only "game" where the odds are biassed in favour of the punter. This may not apply in times of severe financial chaos, such as during a world war, but otherwise the built in growth of the world economy makes money for investors.
In actual practice as far as the issuer is concerned, there is little difference between offering shares and asking for donations. In neither case does one have to pay dividends or pay the money back - ever! People are often happy to buy shares on the prospects of being able to sell them for a higher price later.
What usually makes a company offer dividends is that when it has become prosperous, it can afford to pay them and by so doing its shares become attractive to institutional investors whose clients require an income. These are usually mutual funds or insurance companies. A case in point is the semiconductor manufacturer Intel. It has managed for decades without paying a dividend, but has recently started to pay. This has had the consequence that the share price has gone up as a result of institutional buying. Apart from the obvious, the company will gain by having greater share price stability.
One may well ask why does a company care that its share price has gone up. I said earlier that once it has floated its shares, it doesn't have to pay dividends or buy the shares back. The reasons it cares is that it can go on floating new shares to finance new projects. The higher the share price, the more money it can raise. If the new projects are successful, then the share price will go on rising making it even easier to fund further advances, and so on.
There are, of course, problems associated with raising money by share issues. One is the availability of money. People may love to invest in your company, but simply don't have the money available. People who are "rich" don't have the money in bank accounts or even savings accounts. It is certainly invested somewhere working hard for them. That means that they may not be willing to invest somewhere else when it will cost them money to move their money.
This is particularly true at times like the present when the economy is stagnant. People are unable to buy and sell houses, for example, and many are stuck in property that is now worth less than they paid for it. Anyone familiar with money will know that these times don't exist for ever and patience is rewarded by a recovery in the price of their home. So everyone waits and no one moves. This idea continues into every sphere of business, with the result that those desperate to sell their goods and services have to cut prices until someone decides to buy.
The desperation to sell can result from either the urge to buy "an unrepeatable bargain" or alternatively because they have been forced to buy a service or raise money to pay taxes. People can be forced to buy services by force of circumstances (eg medical care) or legislation (eg lawyers fees). One doesn't have to be a financial genius to realise therefore that fees for "distress purchases" don't fall as do voluntary purchases.
So timing has to be right for a share floatation to be a success. One way round this problem is to have the issue "open" for a long time so that people can buy in their time rather than yours. However the difficulty with this is that people are reluctant to buy early as the price of shares is fixed and they have nothing to gain by not leaving it to the last minute. And, of course, by the time the last minute has arrived something else has claimed their funds! But the American markets are so large that there are usually always enough people around to buy.
Genelabs to develop Hepatitis E Vaccine
According to their third quarter report for 1992, Genelabs Inc entered into an agreement with Smith Kline Beacham for the development and commercialisation of a Hepatis E Vaccine. 2% of the US population are believed to have been contaminated with the hepatitis E Virus (HEV), and the exposure rate has been much higher in the Far East, India, Africa, Asia, and South America.
The company is also working on Hepatitis C, AIDS, and an oral antithrombotic drug. At present the company is reporting losses, but obviously people are buying the shares in the expectation of a payoff from the important research they are doing.
March 1993
Evening Primrose Oil Chemical Used for New Cancer Treatment
An article in the Financial Times of 20 February detailed some new products of the UK-Canadian company Scotia Pharmaceuticals. One is a product known as EF13, which is similar chemically to Evening Primrose oil. EF13 is said to destroy cancer cells without harming normal cells and has no side effects. It is said to double the life expectancy of late stage pancreatic and breast cancer sufferers. Mr Ken Fearon from the University of Edinburgh's department of surgery admits that the drug "really is something different from what is currently available", although there is the inevitable delay before the authorities can be sure that it is really efficacious.
Another drug from the group, EF27 is said to benefit patients suffering the side effects of radiotherapy treatment for cancer. It helps conserve the normal cells whilst still allowing the radiation to kill the cancer cells.
A third product, EF9, can be used in photodynamic therapy, where light is used to destroy cancer cells sensitised by it.
British Politician Complains at Excesses of Lawyers
According to The Financial Times of 6 February, Mr Michael Hestletine gave an address to the Institute of Directors in which he stated that the excessive fees charged by lawyers and accountants in relation to the fees earned by people who created wealth were damaging the nation.
Mr Hestletine is a UK politician who at one time tried to oust Mrs Thatcher and become Prime Minister, thereby causing her political demise. The nation's accountants accused him of bias, after his speech, because he failed his final exams to become a Chartered Accountant. Nevertheless, the fact that he got as far as the finals indicates that he must know enough about the profession to make an educated comment about the value offered by practitioners in relation to their fees.
The newspaper article went on to say that the emphasis in the British government is now changing from service industries, favoured by the previous administration, to manufacturing. The bulk of world trade, said Mr Hestletine, is in manufactured goods. He said that Britain has 120,000 accountants. This is 20 times as many accountants per head of the population than Japan or Germany - which are examples of successful economies. The paper said that he had got it wrong - the figures are even worse. Britain has 200,000 accountants!
As immortalists we rely on scientific progress, and this relies on manufacturing to provide an industrial infrastructure. There is no doubt that we are very near solving major problems in relation to ageing. If these problems are solved and solutions available to the public only a few years sooner rather than later, it could mean the difference between the more elderly members of the Immortalist Society going into cryonic suspension or taking an incremental route to immortality by using serious life extension advances as they come up.
Therefore I conclude that high professional fees and systems forcing industry to pay them via legislation are threatening the lives of elderly immortalists.
An article in Funeral Service Journal February 1993 discussed the problems of burial space, particularly in areas where people are most concentrated, such as Hong Kong.
Two methods were mentioned, one being that bodies are left to rot for 10 years, and the remains were then dug up and stuffed into jars. Another is that of the coffin house, a building where occupied coffins are placed. Some have rooms that are occupied by a single family.
April 1993
Our Cornish Scene this month waa computer image taken from a video recording of a water mill at Port Isaac. I once considered it as a home that could generate its own electricity.
Periastron Proposes a New Scientific Journal
Periastron volume 2 no 3 starts with an article explaining the schism between the establishment of science and cryonics. It details how the scientific establishment used the methods of Goebells' propagandists to try and crush cryonics. However Dr Donaldson points out that cryonics is not 100% pure science. Although its processes involve scientific method, it depends on "ideas about future abilities which necessarily cannot be proven NOW in any way".
Scientific papers have been written by and for cryonicists and apart from political censorship are just as suitable for publication in ordinary science journals as other papers. Therefore Dr Donaldson has been approached by some cryonicists with a view to forming a real scientific journal that would not be subject to the political restraints but otherwise assess all material on its scientific merit as do other professional journals. As some future date they may want to raise funds for it. It is not clear at this stage whether people will be asked to invest in the project with a chance, however small, of reaping some reward, or simply give money to it.
Also there is mention of an article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine by J.B. Bodkin and S.G. Post (Autumn 1992, p129-138) about the definition of death. Apparently the authors got very close to the ideas behind cryonics, but didn't mention it by name. Dr Donaldson has written to them and will report on any reply in a future issue of Periastron. Amongst the remaining articles, one on New Treatments for Brain Aging discussed various substances that may help non-Alzheimer's brain aging.
Periastron PO Box 2365, Sunnyvale, California 94087. Subscriptions cost $2.50 per issue. If you pay for many issues in advance, you avoid any possible price rises. If the newsletter does not continue for any reason, unused subscriptions will be refunded with interest!
Is Productivity at its Theoretical Limit?
In his review of Paepke's book on human advancement in Venturist Monthly News March 1993, Max Moore mentioned that Paepke says that productivity is close to its theoretical limit. I don't know when this was written, but casual observation at the present time in a deepening depression makes this statement seem very hollow. For example, RTL, the company that publishes Longevity Report suffered a 300% increase in audit fees this year on an unchanged turnover, and its banking fees went up 83% on a reduced number of transactions. The former increase was due to the accountancy profession's colleagues in Parliament pushing through legislation that requires small private companies to be audited to the same standards as large public companies.
Productivity is nowhere near its limit because too many talented people have gravitated to professions that destroy rather than create wealth. This is particularly true in the United States, which had more lawyers, and related professionals such as accountants, per head of population than any other country. If this talent was instead employed in design and manufacturing, the cumulative effect to the overall wealth of the country and indeed the world would be staggering.
The loss to progress from the legal profession is not just the obvious - ie the loss to litigants whose lives and earning capacity are ruined. The loss is also the loss of all that the abilities of its practitioners could otherwise achieve if they were put to productive work. The law is a memory intensive study, just as biochemistry, biology and medicine. All these subjects would benefit mankind enormously if pursued more vigorously. People who become lawyers have the sort of minds that are capable of taking in vast amounts of facts and memorising them, bringing them to the fore when needed. They may not have the numerate skills of engineers and "hard" scientists, but by and large these can be hired or even achieved by the use of a computer.
There is a lot of bad feeling growing in the lay population against the legal professions, especially amongst people who have been bankrupted or who worked for companies that have gone under. If this can be used constructively to deter people from entering the legal professions then it will accelerate progress towards the goals of the Venturists. Shooting lawyers may be a justifiable gut reaction, but encouraging them to retrain to work in constructive areas would be a whole lot more productive and in keeping with the ideals of Immortalism.
Such encouragement could be two pronged. If being a lawyer makes a person a social pariah then he is more likely to want to change. Also citizens can suggest to politicians that steps be taken to curb lawyers' salaries and fees and similarly steps be taken to improve the remuneration for research and development. If everyone in the world suddenly stopped going to lawyers and accountants, then the profession would wither.
In the UK the government attempted to fund education and a few much smaller local services by a "Poll Tax". This was a fixed charge per head of the population. The intention was that by making the local authorities' expenditure noticeable by everyone, people would vote in authorities that would spend less. However the local authorities were terrified at the thought of being responsible to so wide an electorate. They whipped up so much public feeling against the tax that there was mass non-payment, and it was impossible to use the courts and the prison system to deal with so many cases. The tax was abolished after only a few years, and replaced by a wealth tax on property owners similar to the tax that Poll Tax replaced.
My point in mentioning this is that there is already almost enough public feeling in the USA and the UK against lawyers and accountants that a similar level of protest could emerge, especially if organised by powerful and influential groups. A possibility might be Unions worried about unemployment. A solicitor (a UK lawyer that can't appear in high court, but who takes instructions from clients and deals with pre- litigation business) earns roughly ten to twenty times the average wage. If companies employ one solicitor then this means that they can't employ ten ordinary people who would actually make things. This information would undoubtedly interest people standing in line for unemployment support.
This ratio should also interest people concerned with the depression. Lawyers say that society is complicated so we need them to sort it out. However we cannot afford the cost of the luxury of such a complicated society. Remove this cost and the economy will grow again, and progress towards a solution to the problem of death and aging will result.
If anyone has access to the following statistics I would be interested:
How much of the Gross National product of various countries is spent on legal work, including accountancy? How has this changed with the passage of time, ie do we now spend more or less? These figures may add credence or detract from my arguments, but my own experiences with the professions suggest that the figures would support what I and others are saying. I would predict that successful economies spend less of their GNP on legal services than others in the developed world.
Women Wait for their Birthdays
According to Funeral Service Journal March 1993, women near death as their birthday anniversary approaches are more likely to hang on and survive for the occasion than men. A study by Dr David Philips, a sociologist at the University of California was based on nearly three million deaths from natural causes.
Dr Philips conjectured that men may perish before birthdays because they review their lives, are dissatisfied, and decide to give up. Women may hang on because they are family orientated and may want to spend one last celebratory day with them.
Also in March's Funeral Service Journal was a report on a Gallup Poll commissioned by the National Hospice Association that nine out of ten Americans would prefer to spend their last days in their own home and to die there.
For the second year running, the Chosen Heritage Funeral Costs Survey exposed the fact that funeral costs have risen more than general costs of living. The average funeral now costs £1039.88 [$1,500]. In rural areas the costs is nearer £500, whilst in cities it is nearer £2,000.
The rise in costs are not due to funeral directors taking more fees, but in "disbursement costs", such as doctors' certificate fees, which take 28% of funeral costs.
Chosen Heritage is an organisation that enables people to pay, whilst alive, for their funeral.
Recycling of graves is standard practice in North America and some European countries, says Funeral Service Journal. A congress late in March was told that re-use of graves may lead to less vandalism of neglected graves and resolve the shortage of cemetery land.
The movement towards making municipal services public companies instead of being privately owned by local authorities may lead to one stop funeral directors, offering everything from collection to cremation and memorialisation. At the present time the profession does not know whether the public will mind this change.
PICS, my lonely hearts club for immortalists, has now had nearly 100 enquirers. However it still has only four members, all men. (One woman did eventually join.) This lack of support makes me consider why people are reluctant to employ an agency to look for that special someone.
One reason may be that they feel the agency is doing the choosing. This is, of course, not correct, at least for listing sheets like PICS. A listing sheet merely gives a list of people available, usually under box numbers, and the clients select their potential partners themselves. In the ordinary way of things people meet each other, and although A may fancy B, the chances of either or both of them being paired off already is very high. By selecting an environment where people are all single, and furthermore by knowing something about the likes and dislikes of the people in that environment, one has altered the odds substantially in one's favour.
However it is a deep seated concept with the masses that the universe is somehow benign and everything has a reason and purpose. Everything that happens however horrible is for the ultimate good. This concept pervades most religion, and is an excellent tool for those in authority to keep control of the rabble.
The concept has as a side effect the idea that one cannot meet the ideal companion unless it was meant by God. A perfect marriage is often described by the expression "they were made for each other". Therefore to look actively for a companion is to deny that God will do it for you. Or it could be regarded as thwarting God if he has planned a life of solitude for you. Working against God is obviously an anathema to religion and also indicates that the individual is not willing to be led by authority - a trait that governments wouldn't want to encourage. However dating agencies aren't banned, merely scorned.
This has strong parallels in immortalism. People accept death because it is natural. It is what God planned therefore it must be good. People accept being ordered (in time of war) to forfeit their lives for the government, and many would be willing to accept shortening of maximum lifespan "for the general good".
There is talk of rationing medical care for the elderly. This is fine if it means incurable cases can be given mercy suspensions, but more likely it will mean that any treatment to prolong life healthy or otherwise could be unavailable to elderly people. Indeed, if cryonics is ever accepted as medical practice rather than a funerary practice it could only be legal for young people who die of disease or accident!
Immortalists reject God's deadly end to their lives, yet they still seem reluctant to use agencies to reject God's plan for the duration of their lives. Maybe they have all found companions through their daily lives in the conventional way. But somehow I doubt this. Maybe they don't want companions, preferring to be single.
However it is not surprising that after so many have enquired that few have joined given that most enquirers are men and we have yet to attract the first female to actually join. We have a special offer where no one pays until there are twenty members, roughly divided between the sexes. (ie if all twenty were men we wouldn't charge anyone until we had ten females.) The few women who enquire are sent the list of four men that we have, in the hope of that one of the listing may interested them and inspire them to join.
It is possible that most agencies get started by introducing fictitious names to get the ball rolling. I have chosen not to do this.
May 1993
Comments on April's Immortalist:
I was very impressed with Peter Christiansen's items in ACS Reports in the April issue of The Immortalist on the medical profession and the call to end the use of violence in the drug war. This bears out the items that appear in Zehse's Cuttings from time to time re bogus doctors in the UK.
It would seem to me in both cases the role of the government should be in educating the public only, ie advising them to see qualified doctors and advising them against hallucinogenic drugs through advertisement. The power of advertisement is very strong, and indeed in the case of drugs may even turn out stronger than the physical violence at present used.
A controversial UK judge, Judge Pickles, has himself pointed out that the present prohibition of drugs is in fact increasing the profits of the suppliers that don't get caught. The crime wave in the UK is most likely drug related.
In fact, the Value Added Tax rate on honest business is 17.5% whereas the detection rate for housebreaking is only 15%. I don't know whether the detection rate relates to value or number of crimes. It would be a better comparison if the detection rate related to the value of property stolen or embezzled. However it is likely that a per valorem basis would be a smaller proportion than per crime, as so many crimes only involve a small amount of property. Also, "big" crimes such as murder are usually given more police time and are therefore solved. But they don't relate to a value of property.
These comments mean that it is likely that, on a value basis, crime is even more lightly penalised than honest business throughout society as a whole.
A programme was screened on British Independent Television concerning the recent popularity of Górecky's third symphony (the first classical symphony to make the UK popular music charts) early in April. In it, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was described as being the herald of the 20th century, and this symphony was its lament, a comment on the mess humanity had made of the world.
This type of thinking is unfortunately prevalent, and it is hostile to the ideals of immortalism. Admittedly there is a lot of mess in the world, but it isn't due to humanity as a whole or to science in particular. Science, or rather the misapplication of it, may be tools that were mis-used to create mess, but science itself is neutral.
What did cause the mess is large concentrations of power, particularly in the forms of Communism and National Socialism. Poland, Górecky's country, saw National Socialism under the German occupation, and this was followed by Communism after the war. The result of these authoritarian regimes was a country made squalid by years of central development.
The most effective government must be the barest minimum necessary to maintain a society in which people can interact without fear of being assaulted or robbed. Although Communism may be on the way out, unfortunately large power groups now threaten to replace government in smothering and choking back progress, simply for their own financial gain.
An example of this can be seen in the pharmaceutical industry, where there is a three cornered struggle between various governments, the drug companies themselves, and regulatory authorities. The companies say that they cannot fund research unless they charge high prices for their products, yet the governments wants them to reduce their prices.
The regulatory authorities on the one hand know that they will cease to exist if the drug companies go bust, but at the same time they seek to choke back any fast progress. They don't seek to maximise the lives saved, but to maximise safety on a policy similar to Star Trek's "prime directive", ie non intervention (in, in this case, disease). According to the regulators, it is better to let a person die of a disease than die in a failed attempt to get rid if the disease. Paradoxically, however, they seem to allow futile surgery to produce a few more weeks of life still to be followed by certain death!
There may well be a better alternative to funding research than by the market process of selling drugs at a profit. However we have yet to find it.
One method might be for the government to fund research, and let the companies to concentrate on production of drugs designed by such funding. The problem with this is that with a single source of funding, some worthy projects may not be completed, as once rejected there is no alternative source innovators can approach.
Another could be for the companies to raise funds for each research project independently via the stock market, and give investors a cut in the profits. This is almost what we have now, except that the profits of any one company depend on both its successes and failures, and everyone is out for the most they can possibly get.
Some of the smaller drug companies are "one product companies" and these are more speculative - you can easily lose your investment if the drug is a failure. However the opportunity for profit is also higher, ie the share price will be volatile.
If a better method of funding research is to appear, then probably the best way is via natural selection amongst many innovations that may appear during the current turmoil facing the industry. The present cap on drug prices proposed by the US government will in the short term cut back on research, but there is a reasonable chance, given that there is not too much control, this change in the environment could cause a better funding method to evolve. However there is also a chance that it could be the end of the era of growth. It will be interesting to see!
I have never been in favour of making initial customers for a product pay for the research that developed it. I think it is better to spread research costs throughout the life of the product.
Funding Development in the Electronics Sector
In computer software, Microsoft is selling its MSDOS 6.0 operating system for PCs at reduced cost for the first few months in order to boost initial sales. I regard this as an excellent policy, and bought shares recently. I also upgraded from MSDOS 4 to 6, and found the upgrade very worthwhile.
In contrast, commentators say that wide screen 16:9 television is likely to be a flop, because although sets are actually cheaper to make, they are being sold at five times the cost of conventional 4:3 sets. However over here at least programme makers are originating programmes in 16:9 format which means a black band top and bottom of the screen on 4:3 sets. I regard this as crass behaviour, and I sold my last holding in the electronics entertainment sector last month.
Why Graduates Shun Science Careers
An important article in New Scientist of 27 March looked into the reasons why UK graduates were preferring careers in accountancy or law instead of science. Fee income etc didn't seem to be a major factor according to author Charles Arthur.
One problem facing students changing from education to industry is that of collaboration. In education, collaboration is cheating which means that you get sent down in disgrace with no degree, whereas in industry it is essential for corporate, rather than individual, progress.
Many technologists feel constricted into a narrow focus when they enter industry, whereas an accountant or law career sees more varied work, said Mr Arthur.
Mr Martin Duffell, head of management recruitment at Unilever, is quoted as having said that scientists and engineers had a more crowded university timetable than lawyers and accountants, and therefore develop fewer social skills. (I wonder whether this is really true: law at any rate involves a lot of memorising and I should have though the successful student would have had to do a lot of "swotting". Interpersonal skills are more likely to result from the nature of the training. Maybe a lawyer who reads The Immortalist would like to comment.)
Mr Duffell also said that a successful industrial company is likely to have a technologist at its head, whereas a failing one appoints an accountant - to reduce costs.
Employers want science and engineering graduates, especially those with "interpersonal skills". Graduates want careers that will exercise their intellectual abilities, already shown by winning a degree, from the start.
A computer programmer said that he wanted more varied work. His first job was to design come code and present it to someone higher up the chain of command in a few months.
The article concludes that graduates and employers will remain dissatisfied unless both business and the design of degree courses change.
Periastron suggests caution on Nanotechnology's role in revivals
Periastron for March 1993 starts with an article which expresses worries about the concept that nanotechnology is capable of restoring any damage done by present freezing methods. Because nanotechnology is not happening on any large scale practical level now, only theories exist. Theories are not constrained by the physical world, and therefore they can be dressed up by a sort of virtual reality into a world of wishful thinking.
The article goes on to talk about supramolecular chemistry, which is getting results now, and also mentions progress on Dr Donaldson's work in forming a scientific journal that will accept work from cryonics researchers. Unfortunately the journal has met with rejection from scientists outside of cryonics who were approached to join its editorial board. They say that they will be looking for funding, but not yet, and again there is no mention of whether they are looking for donations or investments. However the organisation is to be called The Institute for Neural Cryobiology and its journal will be Neurocryobiology.
The rest of the magazine contained some more on memory, and an article on laser controlled chemical reactions, and a piece entitled A Greek Drama.
This tells of a woman dying of a brain tumour for which no approved treatment exists who could benefit from an experimental treatment. Legal and political posturing between regulatory authorities is likely to delay treatment until the woman has died. Dr Donaldson wrote "I, particularly, wish the woman well, but I also suspect that she will probably be ground to death between the two wheels that mill around her."
The treatment involves removing tumour tissue, inserting a gene to stimulate the immune system against that tissue, and then re-implanting it into the patient. The gene stimulates the patient's immune system into a vigourous attack on the tumour. It has worked on animals, as yet it has not been tried in humans. Ultimately, such treatments could completely replace surgery for cancer, hence the aforementioned wrangling.
The primary source for this item is Science (259(1993) 452).
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An article in The Financial Times over Easter discussed the differences between science and religion. Amongst the points raised, was the criticism of science that it offers an inhumane unapproachable universe. Science creates its institutions which are self serving and cut off from people in general.
The article said that most people did not understand scientific methods of hypothesis, experiment, debate and deduction. Religions offer no chance of change. They are governed by dogma and tradition, in defence of which people are prepared to die - and kill.
Inasmuch as science creates professional groups that are unwilling to listen to outsiders, one must agree with the inhumanity criticism. An example is the feud between cryogenics and cryonics. However this criticism isn't really against scientific method but against people who form into groups to defend their financial and other interests. Such groups appear outside of science, of course, the law being another example. Medicine could be described as a branch of science, although some refer to it as a art. However it is notoriously difficult to introduce new ideas.
Although today organ transplants are commonplace, as recently as the 1930s horror films were being made where transplant surgeons are depicted as homicidal lunatics. Today such films as Chiller similarly decry cryonics, thus supporting the existing financial and other structures of the medical profession.
A reply article from the Dean of Salisbury said that any form of extreme blinkered thinking is bad and he could not condone the excesses of religion. However he felt that science was unable to answer some fundamental spiritual questions that people want to consider.
ICN Pharmaceuticals, the company that manufactures the antiviral Ribavirin, had a sharp increase in its share price when its chairman and chief executive officer, Mr Milan Panic, lost the election in Yugoslavia. It has now sent out a letter to its shareholders in which Mr Panic explains why he left the company for an eight months leave of absence to head his former country.
His decision to take the chance offered to him was not taken lightly, but in view of the involvement by ICN in the largest privatisation in Yugoslavia, the chance to restore peace to his homeland was something Mr Panic could not pass by.
Eventually, he decided the answer would be for him to attempt to become President of Serbia, and his failure ended his political career. He said that the fact that he was still able to get 35% of the votes in what most nations regard as a rigged election give great hope for a final peaceful settlement for the region.
However his personal priorities are now to lead ICN into its next phase of growth and progress. Mr Panic will aim to use his contacts and experiences as a statesman to expand his company into emerging eastern markets. The company has as its motto "He who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything."
The mailing also included some newspaper clippings. in The Los Angeles Times of 3 July 1992, Mr Panic is quoted as saying "No idea is worth killing for". Had he gained power in Serbia, he would have jailed extremists on all sides who would not put down their weapons, be they Serbs, Muslims or Croats.
What defines a Proper Religion
An item on breakfast television in the UK was discussing the Davidian cult massacre at Waco, Texas. "They are not a proper religion, with only 80 dead. To qualify as a proper religion, millions must have died for the cause." was the comment made by one studio guest. How true!
The Immortalist April 1993 reprinted a page from Technology Review where the possibility of a microwave tumble drier was discussed. The idea is that the use of microwaves would be 20% more efficient than resistance heating to dry clothes. Microwaves would only heat the water that needs to be evaporated.
Water boils at the 100C temperature only at sea level. The lower the air pressure, the lower the temperature at which it boils.
Therefore I suggest a better high technology method of drying clothes may be to put them in a vacuum chamber. The cost of running the pump until they are dry would be less than providing the equivalent heating power. Indeed, any heat generated by inefficiencies in the pump motor and in the pumping process can be used to raise the temperature of the load, where the water can boil off at near room temperature.
The only problem I can foresee with this method is providing a chamber light enough and strong enough at reasonable cost to the consumer. Oh yes, and making sure that customers don't dry their pets in it and sue the manufacturer when they suffocate!
On 26 April the BBC broadcast a program about the problems of the aging population of Britain and other European countries in their current affairs series Panorama. They started off by mentioning the problem of Granny Dumping, seen in the United States for some while. Unable to care of aging relatives, people dump them near hospitals or other social services and refuse to have anything more to do with them. Sometimes they change the locks of their doors etc to prevent them returning or being returned by the authorities.
In the US more people rent their accommodation, and so therefore can more easily vanish leaving no trace for the authorities to catch up with them. This problem is less relevant in the UK, where most people own their own homes. The authorities often make charges on homes and can threaten to evict people if they don't care for elderly relatives.
However the program pointed out that this was a less than satisfactory solution in the long term, and looked to Germany where consideration is being given to changing this for a general tax the proceeds of which is directed to care of the elderly. Needless to say this tax is meeting opposition with big manufacturers and the trade unions.
Unfortunately the program did not mention the alternative solution of looking to research to abolish the process of aging itself. This is most likely to be felt in the first instance by "squaring the curve", ie people will be active for a longer portion of their lives and then deteriorate rapidly towards the end. This will be of great benefit to governments concerned about caring for a population of elderly people.
Thymosin Alpha One Shares Followed by Major Stockbrokers
In its annual report for 1992, Thymosin Alpha One, the company whose flotation was announced in Anti Aging News (now Life Extension Report), said that its shares are being covered by Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley are one of the most prestigious Wall Street firms, and their reporting on the company to their clients has increased institutional investment in the company and a heightened appreciation of the potential of their product Thymosin Alpha One.
During the fourth quarter, the company has initiated a new pilot study into the interaction of their product with some others in the synergistic treatment of AIDS. A "statistically significant improvement" was found in patients using a mixture of Thymosin Alpha One, alpha interferon and AZT.
June 1993
Patients Should See Operation Death Lists
Writing in The Financial Times 2 May 1993, Dominic Lawson in his regular column addressed a problem with people submitting to surgery.
First he recounted a visit to a dentist, where he says he was butchered, but other dentists called in to made good the damage refused to criticise their colleague. In fact they tipped him off that Mr Lawson might be angry when he recovered, and the malpracticing dental surgeon had quickly emigrated to avoid litigation.
Mr Lawson went on to say that National Health patients often received details of waiting lists for various hospitals for particular operations. He suggests that this is not as important as the death lists for various operations. These are compiled and are available to doctors but not the public. The death rates from common operations vary widely between hospitals. The medical profession said that this depends on what goes on outside the hospital, not the merits of the surgeons and other staff involved. But Mr Lawson concluded that as with every other activity, there must be good and bad practitioners of surgery, and it is time that the profession as a whole recognised the seemingly obvious fact, and stopped trying to whitewash itself by making the public believe that all doctors are equal.
British Police Forces to Research Effects of Relaxing Drug Laws
According to The Financial Times of 16 May, a senior police officer has called for research into the effects of licensing users and suppliers of illegal drugs. The aim would be to reduce the levels of crime against the elderly and vulnerable, at present high to finance drug users' habit.
The present war on drugs merely serves to strengthen the profits of those that are not caught. The violence used against drug dealers is transformed into violence against the general public by robbers and other criminals.
Vultures Pecking at Bankrupt Companies
A letter appeared in The Financial Times of 16 May concerning the collapse of an international company Polly Peck. Its chairman, Mr Azil Nadir, fled the British legal system to take up residence in northern Cyprus, which has no extradition treaty with the UK.
In the letter Mr Rhys-Burgess, a former shareholder in Polly Peck, said that Mr Azil Nadir had been accused of misappropriating £32 million of the company's money.
However the legal administrators who had been appointed to run the remains of the company following its collapse had already taken £16 million in fees. Mr Rhys-Burgess wrote that the administrators are "people who create nothing, contribute nothing, and do nothing except to trade for their own profit in the misfortunes of others."
On the other hand, Mr Nadir had built the company up from nothing, and Mr Rys-Burgess feels it would seem more sensible to allow him to continue running the remaining profitable parts of the business.
I was pleased to see mention of Mr Bozzonetti's cold vaccination articles in Longevity Report in the Quickies section of The Immortalist for May 1993.
The reason why a general vaccination can't be found for colds is that what we refer to as a cold is in fact a whole range of diseases with similar symptoms. These diseases have been designed to mutate rapidly, so although a specific individual never gets the same cold twice, there is always a different cold to infect him if he is contaminated with the appropriate virus.
However there are instances where people are forewarned that they are going to be exposed to a particular virus. Typically this is when a member of a household or work group brings in a cold from outside.
What Mr Bozzonetti has outlined is a method whereby the person bringing in the cold to a group can be used as a source of the virus from which to make a vaccine to vaccinate the remainder of the group, so that they can obtain immunity without experiencing any symptoms. The original virus can be donated by simply spitting into a receptacle, so there is no reason why the introducer should not cooperate.
Mr Bozzonetti's proposal is based on recent biochemical research, and would require the manufacture of kits by a pharmaceutical manufacturer. These kits could be used, like any other domestic appliance, by people who are not professionally qualified. Indeed, anyone with access to the right equipment and materials could follow the recipe right now, but it would require some detailed knowledge to obtain exactly the right components.
According to Funeral Service Journal of May 1993, a Stockport funeral director blockaded his bank's car park with a hearse in protest over excessive bank charges. After five days, says the article, the bank withdrew its imposition.
In the same magazine, a funeral director is reported to have insisted that a client (whom he suspected of having unpaid previous bills) pay for a funeral in advance. He was sued for breach of contract and ordered to pay £100 compensation.
I offer the following suggestion to those who may be interested in using liquid krypton but are put off by the cost. Why not use it in a system where all the boil off is recycled? Then you have the purchase of the liquid krypton as a one-off expense only.
I suggest that the krypton dewar has a tube fitted to its top which is surrounded by a dewar containing liquid nitrogen. As the krypton attempts to boil off, it has to pass up the tube and is condensed by the colder nitrogen and falls back into the dewar.
I appreciate that if this idea was to be taken up, it would need further refinement, but it does have the advantage of using a passive system to stabilise the temperature at a warmer -152oC. The passive nature of the liquid nitrogen system was a big selling point - low maintenance and no dependence on mains electricity.
Periastron Considers Warming Cryonics Patients by 66C
Volume 2, no 5 of Periastron starts with news and comment about the benefits and costs of storing cryonics patients at the warmer temperature of -130C. Mention is made of the new scientific journal, with talk about forming a non-profit corporation. So it looks as though they plan to ask for donations not investments again. Undoubtedly the reasons for this have been gone into carefully, but I must comment, as I have done before, that those who offer investments, such as Mr Milan Panic (Ribavirin research and development) and Dr Morton Schulman, (Deprenyl development) seem to have got far greater funding as a result. Both these men have expressed anti-death sentiments in their objectives.
However Periastron has some bad news for Dr Schulman in this issue: an article reviewing recent research mentions a Deprenyl study on mild Alzheimer's disease patients undergoing a 15 month double blind program. After two months, no patient showed any sign of improvement. However this does not rule out Deprenyl giving benefits to normal elderly people, and other work mentioned in the review still suggests that it is of benefit.
Other articles covered brains, memory, nanotechnology etc. Again, Dr Donaldson seemed to be the sole writer.
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Glaxo Develop New Influenza Anti Viral
According to The Financial Times of 3 June, Glaxo, working with researchers at Monash University in Australia, have designed a new antiviral. It is known only as GR121167X, and attaches itself to an enzyme, on the surface of flu viruses, that does not change during mutations.
The article says that thousands of people die each year from 'flu, even when there is no epidemic. Millions of people suffer the disease each year. The virus is so successful because it is designed to mutate sufficiently to confuse the body's immune system.
The new drug has been tried in cell cultures and in ferrets, and has "potent anti-influenza activity".
Human volunteers are expected to start trials with the drug as a nasal spray within a year, and Glaxo expect to have the product available for regulatory approval after five years.
Other companies are also investigating anti-flu drugs. Wellcome has an experimental compound that attacks another enzyme. It would be taken by mouth. However it has been suggested that the Glaxo product is the best so far.
The Financial Times article referred to an article in Nature published on the same day.
Deprenyl Animal Health Shares Fall for Professional Reasons
The price of shares in Deprenyl Animal Health Inc have undergone wild fluctuations. They have been as high as $10, but in May I was able to buy some for only $1.50. There has been no changes in the company's research program and indeed progress has been made. The fall has been due to market sentiment against health stocks because of Mrs Clinton's attitudes, and also due to professional financiers' short term horizons.
Long term investors are well advised to purchase at these low levels, as the company's objectives, to sell Deprenyl products to extend the life of companion animals (pets), could show results in the next few years and send the share price soaring.
Their recent quarterly report, dated 31 March, said that they had achieved significant milestones: In January, interim positive results were achieved in treating cognitive dysfunction in dogs.
In February and March a new animal drug application was submitted to the FDA and a US patent was issued, and finally there was a presentation to the American Animal Hospital Association.
The company is pursuing its application on the grounds of treating specific diseases. However the ultimate objective is to get dogs living beyond their conventional lifespans by the use of deprenyl. This should be demonstrable well within human lifetimes, and could lead to a public outcry if people are denied access to the same treatment.
However having said that, I should report on a conversation I had with a doctor in a social (ie non- professional) situation. I asked him what would happen if a patient had come into his surgery and asked for Deprenyl for life extension purposes. He said that he would look up the literature and report to the patient what, if any, the risks would be with such a course of action. If he felt that the risk would be severe, he would try and dissuade the patient. Otherwise he would be willing to prescribe. There would be no question of "Aging is not a disease, please don't waste time I could be giving to people who are really sick" or some suchlike. However this doctor came from a highly underpopulated country and may not be under the same pressures as a doctor in the UK or the US.
July 1993
Sea Drama with a Cryonics Flavour
A film was repeated on British television recently with superficially a rather silly plot. A ship, The Goliath (also the title of the film) sank in the early days of World War Two and survivors trapped in an air pocket continued to survive for 40 years. They achieved this by various improbable actions to generate an artificial air supply, using electrolysis of sea water and a very large supply of diesel oil left intact on the sunken ship to generate electricity. After 40 years, they were then offered rescue by some divers.
There were some interesting arguments when some of the survivors elected to remain on the sea bed and die (because their energy supply to make air had nearly run out) rather than live in the "new" world above. This is, of course, similar to the people today who would rather die than take as an alternative to annihilation the chance of cryonic suspension.
Letters to Comments from Cornwall:
I noticed your mention in the May 1993 issue of The Immortalist of my review of Owen Paepeke's book The Evolution of Progress. I would like to respond to it.
I would point out that Paepeke is not some neo-Malthusian kook like, say Jeremy Rifkin. He praises what economic growth has accomplished over the last two centuries, and anticipates what technology can do to improve human beings beginning in the next century. Where he parts company with technological cornucopians, however, is in his argument that technology has already accomplished most of what it can accomplish in the economic realm. The orders of magnitude increases in productivity are behind us, he says; future productivity increases will be of the order of a few percent. And a lot of that will come by using computers to improve management productivity, as Paul Krugman acknowledges in his review in Fortune magazine. But these trivial improvements will not change our lives that much. Paepke even refers to Engines of Creation for support; Drexler makes a similar argument about how, after the maturity of nanotechnology, technological progress will eventually stop because of the fixed character of physical laws.
Regarding attorneys: on pages 184- 187 Paepke discusses the phenomenum of "rent seeking". Many have gone into legalised looting because (a) the wealth is there to be manipulated, and (b) it's easier to make a living this way than in productive business, due to the deceleration of productivity.*
Keep in mind, I am not happy with this scenario. But I find it sufficiently plausible that cryonicists ought to consider it. A lot of the cryonicist investment advice assumes continued economic growth, which may not happen, at least not like it has in the last century or so.
[Mark Plus is editor of Venturist Monthly News, which is available from PO Box 458, Wrightwood, CA92397-0458, for $12/year USA, $15 Canada, $18 rest]
*
I wonder whether the deceleration of productivity may be more due to the financial looters. A UK example is that sawmills have to have dust extraction equipment. Fine. But now the government requires you to register (cost £900) and have them inspected by a private inspectorate which costs £550 per year. Some bloke walks into a factory once a year and says "Ah yes, you still have your dust extractor. Havn't you been good boys. Five hundred and fifty pounds please." I should think that the protection racketeers of the 1930s would be green with envy at people who are able to do this sort of thing not only within the law but with the force of law to support them.
Larger companies have to spend a lot on lawyers just to enure compliance with manufacturing laws. They could employ ten people actually making things for the employment of one solicitor who doesn't make or contribute anything. Those ten people are standing in an unemployment queue. Arthur C Clarke once wrote that if you had an industrial robot that could do a small proportion of what a man can do you wouldn't pay for it to stand on a street corner doing nothing. Yet in order to employ a solicitor who does do nothing in terms of productivity, you leave TEN men standing on a street corner. No wonder productivity is falling!
In Longevity Report 39 page 11, and The Immortalist June 1993 page 16 you summarized my opinions about nanotechnology in a manner which made me feel that they had been distorted in major ways.
I would not say or claim that nanotechnology is presently only a matter of theory. I believe that the proper meaning of the word nanotechnology (that is, technology involved in manipulating matter on a nano scale) includes biochemistry, large parts of present materials science, supramolocular chemistry, and all of the other connected fields and techniques. In this sense, nanotechnology is rich in real technology and real results. The growing role of biotechnology should convince everyone of that. What I have objected to, not just once, but many times, is the appropriation of this word nanotechnology to mean only that small part of the field engaged by Dr Drexler and his disciples.
Anyone seriously interested in renewal of cryonics patients, not to mention all the many other achievements which mastery of matter on a nanoscale will bring, cuts short their imagination and their understanding if they refuse to cast their attention wider than the fields inhabited by Drexler's disciples. There is a great deal of inventiveness by people originally from many fields. The opinion these scientists and engineers have of the work of Drexler's disciples also ranges widely, from highly favourable to outright contempt. (I recently received a letter of this latter kind from an American researcher in supramolocular chemistry now in Japan. The fact that Drexler has virtually ignored chemistry may play a role in such attitudes.)
Furthermore, my own feelings about Drexler himself differ from my feelings about some of his disciples. Drexler's original book, Engines of Creation, contains his invention of the word nanotechnology, and a summary, lacking in a few respects but generally very well done, of all the work up to that time which had gone on in nanotechnology (defined as the manipulation of matter on nano scales). By inventing this word, Drexler drew attention to a major scientific trend which had been growing, almost invisibly, all around us. This was both important and very useful. This books deserves notice and praise. [Available as the recent paperback edition from Longevity Books for £11.20 post paid. -ed]
As for Nanosystems, [not available from Longevity Books - ed] my review in Cryonics summarised my opinion of it: it suffered from a lack of either actual experimental creation of nanosystems of Drexler's kind, or the full computer simulation of a complete system (instead of the simulation of single parts which it presented instead). Either one would have greatly improved it. Either one would also present considerable problems of expense and time, to which I alluded in my original review. While I sympathise with the problem, sympathy alone does not make me conclude that Nanosystems has provided a good case for the systems Drexler describes. To me the work by supramolocular chemists toward actually building working molecular tools deserve at least equal emphasis. It too has not reached a conclusion. But these chemists are wrestling with the real world, which as always turns out messier than any pure theory.
You may also recall that I made a distinction between Nanotechnology and nanotechnology. Capitalization in the first word alludes to another fault of many of those charmed by Nanotechnology. It takes on, in their minds, many aspects of religion, not science. One major characteristic of such religion is the fundamentally passive attitude of its believers. Nanotechnology will sometime solve all problems, so we need not stir ourselves to work towards any solutions. All will be solved when the Apocalypse of Nanotechnology arrives! (Mike Perry has pointed out that not all Christian thinkers, even early Christian thinkers, took this passive attitude, but the attitude is rife in Christianity regardless.) And of that religious attitude, I doubt that Nanotechnology will even help nanotechnology itself, much less any revivals of cryonics patients.
I hope that in this letter I have explained my own views on the issue of nanotechnology.
[Dr Donaldson is the editor and publisher of Periastron.]
UK Public Hostility to Lawyers
In the UK the public hostility to the legal profession is accelerating, with ample representation in the media. On UK's Channel Four in peak Sunday evening viewing time a programme called Street Legal exposes the most incredible stories about the profession.
Another programme referred to the shortage of high court judges in the UK. Such a posting one would have thought a great honour and a pinnacle of a barrister's career, with its $150,000 per year salary, long holidays and a short working day. But not a bit of it. Barristers earn far more than that, typically $375,000 a year, and sometimes as much as $1,500,000. They also say the work is more interesting than being a judge.
These statements were made by the programme in two booklets it distributes:
The English legal system is a maze of oak-panelled corridors, unintelligible jargon, pitfalls and concealed traps - and, sometimes loneliness, fear and financial hardship.
The more that individual citizens know about the law, the better they will be able to use it.
Law making, like law breaking, is out of control. Year by year Parliament swamps us with new laws. Much of this is lost on most of us. Even when it is not, the problem of affording and obtaining the legal services necessary to take proper advantage of all this law is formidable.
UK Government Joins Terrorists by Charging Tax on Money Paid to Extortionists
According to The Financial Times of 12 June, the UK government has revealed draft rules that prevents businesses that are threatened by terrorists to pay up or be blown up from paying the money out of pre- tax funds. The stated aim is to reduce terrorism, but in fact the government will merely be siding with the terrorists in extorting money from businesses.
The article also mentioned that although prostitution is illegal in most circumstances, the UK Inland Revenue still collects taxation from any of its earnings that are declared. A case brought against the Inland Revenue for "living off immoral earnings" failed in the high court. (Legalese for running a business employing prostitutes for sale of their services to other people.) The Inland Revenue says that it has no qualms for accepting tax from shady enterprises, and says that it hopes it has not been aiding and abetting these activities by lending an air of respectability to them. However the tax authorities said that they were bound by law not to report any illegal businesses to the police.
An article in New Scientist 19 June reviews Lee de Forrest and the Fatherhood of Radio by James A. Hijiya, (LeHigh University Press). It seems that cryonics is not the only high technology subject to be raped by the legal profession.
The invention of the triode by de Forrest and FM radio by Edwin Armstrong might have lead to both earning a fortune. But continuous legal battles between the two over patents on regenerative feedback left both men paupers.
Armstrong committed suicide and de Forrest died penniless, without even a funeral. A narrowly avoided prison sentence when de Forrest's company North American Wireless Corporation went bankrupt was another award society heaped upon the hapless inventor.
Perhaps Intel and AMD (manufacturers of microprocessors and other components for PCs) should learn something! In Intel's first quarter report Mr F. Thomas Dunlap, Jr, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, said: "We have six different litigations going on with AMD, but they all follow basically the same pattern. Intel comes out with a successful product; AMD copies it and tries to overcome legal hurdles."
Airtight Coffins Preserve Indefinitely
Funeral Service Journal of June 1993 carried an article concerning the work of Mr Emil Degrezia of New Jersey in their section News from Around the World. He has developed an airtight casket made of "space-age polymers". It is claimed to be capable of preserving a body for an indefinite length of time.
Publicity and licensing agents International Product Design, of Fort Lee, New Jersey say that the container is "unique and beautiful" and signals "the beginning of a new era in funerals". [The article did not give the zip code or fax and phone numbers, so anyone wanting to contact them needs to do further research, I am afraid!]
Spoof Life Extension Article Gets Serious Response From Biotechnology Companies
According to New Scientist of 26 June, Nature published an article Dorian Gray Mice by Professor Robin Weiss, of Chester Beatty Laboratories of the Institute of Cancer Research, London, on 1 April. It claimed that Sigmund Obispo, of the Stoyte Institute of Life Sciences, California, had isolated a gene that confers immortality on carp and transplanted it into mice, who also lived indefinitely. The article suggested that what was true of mice today would be true of people tomorrow.
Professor Weiss was inundated with requests for references, invitations to speak at conferences, and lucrative offers from biotechnology companies.
New Scientist said that professor Weiss found the response puzzling. In fact the article came from the plot of Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (see Longevity Report 25 page 7 for Bob Brakeman's analysis of this). The names Obispo and Stoyte were actually taken from the novel.
Other readers complained to Nature that they should not mix fact with fiction. [See The Immortalist June 1993, page 37.] Professor Weiss replied that people should read all articles in Nature with healthy scepticism.
Of course this April Fool joke worked so well because many people reading Nature couldn't remember everything else that they had read before. In fact Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies the Swan was the subject of a Bob Brakeman article in Longevity Report, and also broadcast as a radio play, but when reading the New Scientist article for the first time I didn't recall the names Obispo and Stoyte until I read where they came from.
But the same applies with real information. When you read an article in a scientific journal, maybe you have read something relevant before that the author hasn't. Then there is a connection in your brain that may be totally novel - if you remember the other fact! Just as Obispo (not a particularly forgettable name) was forgotten, so might many other things.
Definition of an inventor: someone who happens to read something and remember something at the same time which when put together create a new third thing. It is rather like a gambling "fruit machine" really!
H & Q Life Sciences Investors Arrange Seminar
Hambrecht and Quist Capital management are a company that manage a fund investing in companies concerned with life sciences. Their fund holders were invited to a seminar following their general meeting on 7 July at the Four Seasons Hotel, Boston, Mass. The preliminary list of invited companies included Alkermes, Creative Biomolecules, Mitek Surgical Products, Transkaryotic Therapies.
Their proxy statement form indicates that shareholders in the fund can offer proposals at the meeting. Therefore if any reader lives in the Boston area and fancies his chances at recommending the fund invest in immortalist orientated companies, then now is his chance.
The address is H & Q Life Sciences Investors 50, Rowes Warf Boston MA02110, tel (617)-0567. Shares in the fund can also be bought through stockbrokers.
An article in New Scientist 3 July details promising results in the fight against AIDS obtained from a plant found only in Western Australia.
The exact name of the plant wasn't given, presumably to stop the world's supply being stripped bare before there was a chance ever to do proper clinical trials. However they did say that it belongs to the genus Conospermum. Specimens were first collected in 1981 by Richard Spjut, a botanist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Spjut sent them to the US National Cancer Institute for screening for possible anticarcinogens, but as not result was obtained, they were shelved. Later they started screening natural material for anti-AIDS action.
One particular chemical, a naphthoquinone trimmer, found in the extract from the plant prevented HIV from replicating and from killing a type of human immune cell.
Dwight Kaufman, deputy director of the division of cancer treatment said the chemical, called conocurvone, is "extremely exciting".
Conocurvone can be synthesised from precursors found in the plant, and these precursors can be synthesised from ordinary materials. Therefore theoretically conocurvone can be synthesised without access to the plant. However the processes involved would make the end product very expensive.
Both Australian and American officials are concerned that people will strip Western Australia of Conospermum, endangering the supply. They warn that simply eating the plant would be dangerous as it contains many toxic substances. The active component is itself toxic and may not even be suitable as an AIDS cure for that reason, unless its side effects can be buffered by other pharmaceuticals. At best the other symptoms generated by the cure could be severe.
There are also legal issues. Australian lawyers are concerned that the county will receive a substantial financial contribution from fees earned if an anti-AIDS medicine is produced. Third World countries are looking at the case with interest, as other plants peculiar to various parts of the world may hold cures to diseases suffered in the developed nations.
However the Australians realise that it would not be in their own best interests to delay development of any useful pharmaceuticals.
A team of chemists from the National Cancer Institute led by Michael Boyd will describe the structure of the conocurvone molecule in The Journal of the American Chemical Society "shortly". Maybe by the time this appears the article will be published.
I would comment that once the structure of the molecule is known, the mechanism by which it attacks HIV may become clearer, leading to less toxic and expensive substitutes becoming available. The New Scientist article says that at present chemists who have studied it are not sure how it works, but its action is known to be different to AZT and relatives.
Amber no Good For Morphostasis
Also in 3 July's New Scientist was an article heralding the release of the film Jurassic Park to British cinemas. Relevant to us was the comment about the scientific accuracy of the idea of finding dinosaur DNA in blood sucking insects trapped in amber.
Whereas some DNA might survive, the article says, and the bodies of the insects look preserved, inside enzymes have destroyed body tissues and proteins.
Therefore preservation of humans in large blocks of amber is not an option anyone interested in preserving brain structure should consider. You'd be lucky to get more than a few molecules of DNA for a clone - that is, if you can find them amongst all the goo.
August 1993
Gene Lab Loss Doubled by Accountants
Despite reporting sales up by approximately five times, audit procedures doubled the per share loss at Gene Labs, the AIDS test company, in the current quarter.
The reason for this loss is a professional requirement that "under the purchase method of accounting, is the portion of the purchase price allocated to in-process research and development", said the quarterly report.
Losses in research companies are not uncommon, and in fact this company has a very promising product line for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of life- threatening viral diseases.
On 19 March 1993 Science magazine reported on a new technique developed by the company for measuring accurately the amount of circulating HIV in patients' blood. This is useful for evaluating anti AIDS drugs, such as the company's GLQ223. It will also help research leading to a better understanding of the disease.
The company has acquired Diagnostic Biotechnology (Pte) Ltd to expand and commercialise its products. The acquisition will strengthen the company's aim to obtaining a strong share of the world's market in confirmatory diagnostic products.
Eye Surgery for Cataracts Surpassed by Electronic Spectacles
Instead of having his opaque lens cut out, Siegfried Klein, a French physicist, has invented a new form of spectacles to aid cataract sufferers, according to New Scientist of 17 July, 1993.
It is known that if a cataract sufferer wears a pinhole lens in his spectacles his vision is restored. However the field of vision is much less. Klein's solution is to use a device in the spectacle lens similar to an LCD display to scan the pinhole across the eye. The scan field rate is 50Hz, as is a UK television picture.
However the image is dimmer and night vision would be affected. The same principle can be used to make sunglasses which do not distort colour vision, which will be of special interest to pilots. The advantage of the spectacles over surgery for cataracts is that the patient retains the ability to focus, which is lost when the lens is surgically removed. Surgical patients had to rely on many different spectacles, one for each range of focus.
Mr Klein's former employers, France's state owned nuclear research institute, financed his research and hold the patents on the technology. A French company is developing LCD scanning sunglasses, for sale initially to pilots.
According to The Financial Times of 22 July, a law student was found by exam invigilators to have 32 sheets of closely written crib sheets stuffed up his jumper, and other cribs were found elsewhere on his person.
He was sitting an examination on the subject of mishandling of accounts. Mishandling of accounts is the reason why most solicitors are struck off the register.
UK Property Market Described as Dream House of Horrors
Writing in The Financial Times of 24 July, Mr Dominic Lawson blamed overpriced surveys, valuations and hidden commissions for turning house buyers into "scavenging predators". The system is designed to maximise conflict and to encourage dishonesty, he says. British people behave with the cynical savagery of a Wall Street junk bond salesman when they see the home they want. He calls for a more user friendly system of property conveyance, although this would not please lawyers and the new profession of licensed conveyancers.
Risks of Surgery by UK Dentists
A programme broadcast by the BBC in their prestigious Panorama current affairs series exposed that only 25% of UK dental surgeons took precautions that their "handpieces" were autoclaved against AIDS and other diseases.
It started with a screen shot of a funeral and a report on the Florida dentist David Acer, who killed five patients by contaminating them with AIDS. It also mentioned the law suit of Jim Sharpe who is not gay, promiscuous or a drug user, and who caught AIDS from a tooth extraction.
It looks at possible theories as to how the contamination was perpetrated, and even considered the possibility that this was deliberate. They interviewed a homosexual friend of Acer's, and used a discussion between the two gays as a possible motive for the murders.
Apparently Acer had put forward the theory that if the US Government found that normal people were also infected by AIDS they would make more effort to find a cure. The programme then suggested how Acer could have committed the crimes to make it look to the government that normal people could be infected at random. However even the program makers themselves considered this theory to be far fetched, and then they started a detailed investigation into other methods the disease could be transferred.
The actual drill bits that the dentists use are routinely autoclaved, but the handpiece isn't. Experiments were then performed to discover whether the handpiece could somehow collect infectious blood debris from patients mouths and transfer it. Acer had the same strain of AIDS as a number of gay friends, and he used to treat them out of hours.
Research discovered that blood products found their way into the delicate turbine mechanism in the handpiece, and could be ejected into subsequent patients' mouths. A studio demonstration made this quite obvious.
An image showed the turbine of a dental handpiece and the biological contamination.
The journalists then did a survey of UK dental surgeons, and found that only 25% of them regularly autoclaved their handpieces. Autoclaving a handpiece reduces its life, and in fact it costs £4 per patient to do this.
Some handpieces sent for repair were found to be so clogged up with blood and other debris that the engineers regularly autoclaved them before repairing them. An example was shown on the programme, and a doctor said that under no circumstance would he want that in his mouth.
Another picture shows some of the filth in a dental handpiece scraped off onto a researcher's finger (after Autoclaving, of course!)
Shown here is an electron micrograph of debris found in dental handpieces as used on patients.
The presenter said that the chances of getting AIDS at the dentist was low, but it is certainly not zero. Also, other diseases could be transferred, from E. coli to hepatitis, also fatal in some forms. A virus that can attack the heart is also found in people's mouths. This is also fatal.
My local paper, The West Briton carried a statement of reassurance from local dental surgeons after the broadcast. They claimed that the risk was minute and that many dentists used new type handpieces. They did not say that the new type handpieces were more easily autoclaved or that they were less prone to collecting oral debris. They also claimed that the costs of sterile procedure (gloves, mask and disposable needles and other measures) in dental surgeries was £10 per patient and that surgeons made a loss on National Health Service patients. Also the government run NHS is cutting back on dentistry at a time of rising costs due to the need for extra sterility.
Comment
This is just one of the problems associated with preventative dental surgery. I don't know many people but I do know of two people who say they know someone who has never had dental surgery in their lives and who have had no trouble and who have died with all their teeth. Couple this with the fact that half the population do not have regular treatment and this half have more teeth in old age, and there is something clearly very wrong with the way preventative dental surgery is practised.
One can't really blame dentists because they are only as good as their education makes them. The profession as a whole however stands to gain from people having as much surgery as possible. An earlier television programme, Independent Television's News at Ten accused dentists of "cutting into people in order to make money." A similar accusation emerges from maverick dental surgeon Dr R.O. Nara in Money by the Mouthful (available from Oramedics 200, E. Montezuma Av Houghton MI49931 USA). He was so outspoken that his profession tried to expel him, without success after a lengthy court battle.
What we really need is a very serious scientific study on the effects and advantages (if any) of preventative dental surgery. Would, in fact, the public be better off if teeth were only treated when they give trouble?
Should infected teeth be extracted as a matter of course, or should they be treated and allowed to heal? Dr Nara claims that damaged teeth can heal themselves if pampered. He says that root canal fillings are often inserted unnecessarily and if the tooth is filled normally the nerve can regenerate. Dentists are often too keen to perform this expensive procedure, sometimes involving oral bandages and repeat visits, on teeth whose lives are then limited.
Dr Nara also claims that expensive and painful gum surgery is of little value and cleaning gum pockets with a Water-Pik or similar appliance is cheaper and more effective.
The UK in particular has a poor record of autoclaving dental handpieces, says Panorama and only 25% of surgeons do it. The country also offers free dental care to people of low means and subsidised dental care to the rest. If this care is of a form that is ill advised, then think of the saving if such care was only subsidised on an "as of need" basis.
People that go to the dentist regularly still get toothache and have other problems, such as crowns, bridges and other "appliances" falling off.
Do people who go to the dentist regularly get as many or more incidents of toothache as people who don't? Toothache isn't terminal, it is self limiting in most cases, although if swelling is present then an antibiotic should be used, and if it does not subside then medical help should be sought. But even then, should the medical help include tooth extraction, or is an antibiotic followed by improved oral hygiene sufficient, at least in some cases? People will have their own views on this I know, but had the question been put to a full and rigorous scientific survey?
Another point that need rigorous research is, assuming that preventative surgery is a valid concept, why do so few people have it? Many would say "the cost", but I am sure that those who are eligible for free treatment don't always avail themselves of it. I would suggest that professional procedure may be the cause. However well meaning dental surgeons may be, their procedural habits are designed to save them time against patients' time. When patients' anxieties come into the equation, it may be that procedures, such as subjecting the patients to temporary fillings rather than doing permanent fillings when needed, making patients have separate appointments for inspections and surgery, and failing to discuss treatment options, are keeping people away.
I suspect that the news media will not leave the profession alone until some big changes are made. Many individual dental surgeons feel that they are not liked by their patients, and this shake-up could well lead to a better understanding between practitioner and patient.
Perhaps the dentist will cease to be someone you see out of a sense of duty when you feel well, and and someone you leave feeling ill. Instead, the dentist will come to be someone you only go to when ill and you leave the surgery being cured. Then everyone will like the dentist!
This organisation specialises in newsletters and books on law, investment and small business, with a particular emphasis on what can be achieved by the individual. They advertise in investment newspapers, and offer a sample selection of newsletters together with their Customer Discount Manual for only $11.95. I wrote in following a recommendation from Eric Klein, and they said that they had processed my order without charging me because they weren't sure whether all the newsletters would send me samples as I was overseas! At the time of writing I don't know whether I'll get any newsletters, but the Customer Discount Manual has some very interesting articles as well as book mail order offers. [Select Information Exchange 244 West 54th Street New York NY10019]
One full page advertiser said in his advertisement "The biggest impediment to business is not the government any more. It is lawyers." He went on to advertise a $53 book on how to avoid using lawyers, how to defeat lawsuits and if you really have to use a lawyer how to reduce his bill. Immortalist organisations such as the Life Extension Foundation and Alcor may be interested in the wheeze he recommended for those attacked by a government agency. Find their busiest, most swamped office. Hire a lawyer in that town and have the case transferred there. If the case simply doesn't get lost in the shuffle, you will at least gain a huge delay and most likely get a much weaker and inexperienced attack on you or your business.
The book is called How to Outfox the Foxes, and costs $52.90 including post. Nevada residents have to add $3 sales tax. [CTI Publishing Co 4533, N. Carson Street, Carson City, NV89706]
This month's Periastron brings together a few articles in the science press about life, the universe and the Copernican Principle (we are common rather than unusual). We must live out lives now, when the numbers of humans living is at its maximum, for our lives to be most probable, according to an article in Nature by JR Gott III [363(1993) 315-319. This has some unusual and possibly sombre conclusions about immortalism and also any result of the SETI project.
Rather than risk getting the arguments wrong (again) I will leave it up to readers to get Periastron and read the article.
Other articles explained the importance of memory studies, and the professional cryobiologists' failure to publish work on neural cryopreservation. Gene Changing for Adults was in my view an important article. If we are to use some means other than cryonics to live longer than the present norm, genetic modification of existing people is likely to be the most probable mechanism.
Again the evident scholarship of Dr Donaldson's articles seems to have frightened off any other authors. Quite what this says about the immortalist movement I don't know, but it is slightly worrying.
Periastron PO Box 2365, Sunnyvale, California 94087. Subscriptions cost $2.50 per issue. If you pay for many issues in advance, you avoid any possible price rises. If the newsletter does not continue for any reason, unused subscriptions will be refunded with interest!
The world famous word processor has had an upgrade, to version 6. However despite its excellent file and graphics managers, it runs very slow on even a 386. Also document conversions from version 5.1 are not straightforward when you have text boxes. If you have plenty of time and a fast computer, I can recommend the upgrade for the new features and ease of use. But if you have a slow machine you can out type it even with two fingers in the fastest (text) mode.
September 1993
Dr Ernst Fasan kindly took some of his valuable time to reply to some of the events I have been reporting in this column concerning the bad image of the legal profession with the public.
Obviously I report these events because I agree with the disquiet the public has with this profession. In fact, the senior partner of a law firm here in Cornwall admitted to me that the Law Society Gazette is constantly warning its readers to do everything they can to improve public relations.
One reason why I have this problem with the profession is that I feel that my chances of being placed into cryonic suspension are seriously compromised by their money making systems. However it is not a simple matter of sour grapes because legal advice of any but the lowest complexity is beyond my means. After all, I would like to have my own aeroplane but I don't hate plane makers because aircraft are too expensive to own and run. And I don't have a hate against flying instructors because a course of instruction is compulsory (if you want to fly a 'plane) and also expensive. So why this problem with lawyers?
I think the answer is value or rather lack of it. They charge far more than anyone else per hour of their time, and the quality of service they give is actually less than that available from other trades and professions. They hide behind rule books and fail to tell clients what is happening, and subject them to long periods of delay and worry. People who visit lawyers do so in times of stress, such as bereavement, divorce etc., and they are most vulnerable to suggestion. They are unwilling to complain in such circumstances. Society forces them to go to lawyers at various points in their lives.
An example of compulsory purchase of professional services is as follows. The UK government and banks have a cosy little arrangement whereby the banks earn substantial interest on death taxes. The government forbids a deceased's assets to be sold before probate is granted, and they forbid probate to be granted until death tax is paid!
Therefore the only way for the stal