Update on Kim Suozzi (cancer patient in want of cryonics)

Wow.

I don't have the confidence in the advisability of cryonics that most here seem to; but I still want to applaud this. Well done, Internet, and I dearly hope she wakes one day.

In 1992 I attended a dinner held by Alcor's people to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the cryosuspension of James Bedford, who has managed to stay frozen after all these years and currently resides at Alcor.

Mike Darwin gave one of his characteristically passionate and learned speeches at this event, where he invoked Joseph Campbell's ideas popular at the time about the Hero's Journey. As I recall it, Mike said that James Bedford, an ordinary man, went on a fantastic journey across time to an unknown future, in effect becoming a new kind of mythic hero. Some day, Mike said, Bedford the myth might contribute to reconstituting Bedford the man.

Bedford hasn't exactly become a household name, but then his suspension happened before most of today's Americans were born. Kim Suozzi's struggle and cryosuspension, by contrast, has happened in our awareness and in a different media environment. She may have the potential to become a kind of mythic heroine for the millennial generation. And I would certainly like to see Suozzi the myth become Suozzi the healthy, whole young woman again.

We just need some poets to tell this myth in compelling ways. Stephenie Meyer has demonstrated that a market exists for stories about ordinary mortal women of Kim's generation who become "reverse Arwens" by rejecting aging and other human limitations.

Steven B. Harris, MD, also wrote about the repurposing of mythological tropes for cryonics purposes years ago in his essay, "Cryonics And The Resurrection Of The Mythic Hero," which you can read by scrolling down on this page:

http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/cryonics8809.txt

I'd like to thank LessWrongers who donated for Kim's suspension. I hope you didn't donate your money in vain.

May science speed you, Miss Suozzi.

These days, publicity can make you literally immortal!

Enough money was raised, and when she died on the January 17th, she was preserved by Alcor.

Alcor? That's curious. Given the critical lack of funds I would have expected Cryonics Institute to be used. It seems like enough money and then some was raised!

I am so incredibly glad that she made it.

I've thought of a way of managing the religious objection to Kim's possible revival versus Abrahamic afterlife beliefs. Eternity doesn't mean endless time like we experience it. Many theologians argue that in eternity, our assumptions and experiences about time don't apply. Kim's soul, whatever that means, could very well exist in eternity in whatever place god assigns it (preferably a tolerable one if god considers her an "anonymous christian," despite her agnosticism), yet this soul could also inhabit the realm of time in Kim's revived and restored body (and she'll literally need a body because she got a neurosuspension) in Future World.

In other words, each outcome doesn't necessarily have to exclude the other. I work with a woman who converted to Orthodox Christianity and has a side business selling icons, and apparently in that tradition a "mystery" doesn't have the meaning of "puzzle" which the human mind can potentially solve and understand, as in our use of the phrase "murder mysteries." Orthodox Christians believe that not only does the human mind not understand god's mysteries; the human mind simply cannot understand them. Instead the Christian has to accept the mystery as a revelation of god's transcendent sovereignty over creation. Kim's revival might find some elbow room in this understanding of "mystery" for certain kinds of religionists who might otherwise consider her demon-possessed or a zombie.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_Christian

Farewell, and see you on the other side!

when she died

She's clinically dead for sure, but probably not information theoretic dead. I'd rather use the latter definition.

Anyway, she did successfully raised her odds, so that looks like good news.

I interviewed Kim for a potential article for humanity+ magazine about her quest to get charitable funds to pay for cryonics. The article was never published because very shortly after my interview Alcor decided to fully fund Kim. Here is part of the article:

Kim Suozzi’s Cold and Lonely Journey To Outrun Brain Cancer

Like any sensible girl diagnosed with a fatal disease, 23-year-old Kim Suozzi is making arrangements to be cryogenically preserved. Kim has brain cancer, and although she's participating in a clinical trial for an experimental treatment, she told me that without cryonics her chance of survival would be basically zero.

As hard as it should be to believe, there are actually some people in Kim's position who forgo cryonics to accept certain death even though these people don't want to die. There are cancer patients who would spend every penny they have plus a bunch of taxpayer dollars, and then (if it were necessary) crawl across broken glass for a traditional treatment that would give them only a few percentage points chance of survival, but who have no interest in cryonics. Although I don't think all of these people should be forced into cryonics, at the very least they should be compelled to take a sanity test to determine if they're capable of making rational medical decisions. After all, the norm in Western society is to treat a preference for suicide as a sign of mental illness.

Of course, in reality it's people who sign up for cryonics , such as this author, who are considered mentally suspect. Fewer than 3,000 people have ever registered for cryonics despite the fact that over a hundred million have surely heard of it. We consider death, especially when it strikes someone who should be only in the first third of her life, a horrible, heartbreaking tragedy. Yet cryonics, which offers a means of escaping or at least postponing death, is something almost no one opts for, making Kim Suozzi a socially brave pioneer rather than an ordinary cancer patient.

If you think that, as futurist Ray Kurzweil writes, the Singularity is near (Kurzweil estimates 2045) then it won't take too long before cryonics could be used to revive you. Kurzweil has signed up for cryonics, and Kim told me that the plausibility of Kurzweil's analysis is a big part of why she is interested in cryonics.

A small correction: The Society for Venturism has been around for quite a while, although I have a vague impression they've been more active in the last year than in the past. I had a look at their site to see when they were founded (1986), and noticed they're currently raising funds for someone else, Aaron Winborn.

That's got to be close to a best case suspension. I wish her nothing but the best.

We did it!

Some mass media coverage here. Also this video features her (religious) mother explaining the reasoning behind the head-only thing and how she came to terms with it.

It will be interesting to read the case report if/when it's posted.

I say this about relatively few people, especially women, but from what I've learned about Kim, I feel that I approve of her.

Secular, science-oriented, self-interested, passionate about doing something controversial to try to survive, and apparently non-promiscuous. (The last appeals to the Dark Enlightenment conservative in me.)

I wish I had a girlfriend like her when I went to college.

I would have wanted the time to get to know her better. Perhaps I will if we both make it to The Other Side.

I have to laugh at you people. You downvoted one of my comments because I wrote that I thought Kim had avoided the hookup behavior which damages young women's character and makes them unsuitable for stable relationships with men?

In other words, you don't like the fact that I called her the opposite of a slut?

What a perverse world I live in, where we have both more sluts and more sexually rejected men than ever, yet the political correctness thought-police requires us to accept this situation as an "advanced" society.