Re: Cryonics and organ donation

From: Robert Bradbury (
Date: Sat Apr 08 2000 - 13:01:29 MDT

On Sat, 8 Apr 2000, Damien Broderick wrote:

> At 01:02 AM 8/04/00 -0400, Robert wrote:
> I discussed tradeoffs between term & whole life insurance.
> I know zilch abt all this, but what happens if & when (a) the insurance
> companies realise that medical/genomic/nanomed improvements in healthy
> longevity are adding together into a lifespan revolution (on the face of it
> fees should fall, but...), (b) potential customer get it, too (they'll
> stopping buying insurance, no?).

Well, there is always a basis for insurance against accidents, but in
general I would agree that people will reduce life insurance as they
see medical technologies able to repair or reverse most causes of
death. However(!), you might get people being insured for a lot more
"semi-elective" health insurance. You want to pay for the preventative
maintenance, latest health monitors, organs-pre-grown-and-cryoed, etc.

> If the whole customer base for the
> insurance industry collapses around the same time revival becomes
> technically feasible - since both are constrained/enabled by the same
> factors - then the cryo warehouse customers will be shit out of luck right
> when they need it most. No?

I don't think so. When you are "legally" dead, the funds (from term
or whole life) go from the InsCo to the CryoOrg. Now, I would hope
they don't put it back into any insurance managed fund. Perhaps
a market index fund would be the best approach. You could probably
review the cryo orgs funding approaches online if you look around a bit.
Most people think their friends and family are going to pay for
the revival costs. The other alternative is to put something
additional away to pay for the reanimation.

What *will* be interesting is what happens to the value of all those
InsCo investments in skyscrapers, when nanotech (or even widespread
optical fiber) makes city-centers obsolete (as is documented in
Egan's Distress). I think most InsCo's are starting to get the
hint and are shifting away from hard assets into stock assets
because the ROIs have been so much better over the last 10-15 years.

The really interesting part of the Singularity/Spike will be the
equity shifts *required* to maintain any wealth. You have to dump
any assets where the valuation is based on "mass" assets or
infrastructure, and move it quickly into software/bio/nano
development companies.

Gotta be nimble, gotta be quick, oh lord, how can you tell
that you made the right pick.


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