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It would be easy for me, as a professional scientist, to pour scorn upon Longevity Report 92, the newsletter of Longevity Books. It deals predominantly with the topic of cryonics, the freezing of the dead for later resurrection at some time in the medically advanced future. However history shows that the easy targets at the peripheries of science can very quickly become the accepted mainstream and they deserve an objective approach. The problem is that as hard as I try to remain open-minded, Longevity Report 92 makes that very difficult indeed.

The first article, written by Robert Ettinger, is though interesting. SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT ATHEISM highlights in a few short paragraphs some subtleties which are often overlooked by leading commentators. Unfortunately though, it is downhill from page 2.

In James Swayse's contribution GETTING SPOUSES TO SIGN UP he seems to claim that the spouse should sign up to being frozen out of love for their partner and that should be the end of the matter. I had to re-read this to be certain that this was not meant to be a humorous article. Here, and throughout this publication, ethics are noticeable only by their absence.

In A NOTE ON PROBABILITIES AND CRYONICS Michael Hartl attempts to apply probability theory to a complex ethical dilemma. Whilst his explanation of probabilities is entirely correct and clearly explained, it is dangerous to use them in this way. It attempts to give some credibility to his conclusion — signing up to cryonics is desirable — without the slightest attention to the moral issues. This is not logic, it is sophistry.

The trend continues in Steve Harris' feature that responds to an article in the Miami Herald. He takes the commendable approach of selecting individual excerpts and responding with comments to each in turn. His arguments however are so defensive as to obscure any real discussion of the issues. He uses capitalisation in a vain attempt to make his argument more forceful but could have spent his time more wisely using a spellchecker and correcting a number of typographical errors.

Elsewhere Douglas Skrecky provides an update on his fly longevity experiments that examine how environmental factors affect the life expectancy of fruit flies. To the new reader these four pages of tables and text are just information saturation. Whilst I have a suspicion that the results may actually be very interesting, they are lost in an inability to communicate the science.

This newsletter may well be of interest to the supporters of cryonics and related topics, but it is self-serving and does little to develop a wider, and necessary, debate.

This is an A4, 20 page newsletter which is largely about cryonics. It contains articles with titles such as FREEZE DRYING REVISITED and UPDATES ON FLY LONGEVITY EXPERIMENTS 73-81. It is opinionated and reports on very unscientific experiments. However, cryonics is a fascinating subject. Problems at the cellular level of preservation have come a long way in the last thirty years. Sperm and eggs can easily be stored in banks. This newsletter does touch on the taboo subject of death and the need to face up to it. It also touches on ethical problems surrounding cloning and related issues. The newsletter is well-edited but there is no editorial. It seems to be aimed at those wishing to have their bodies preserved at low temperature after death. I would like to see more focus on longevity in terms of staying healthy. For instance, I wonder how many of the readers of this newsletter are smokers, or are overweight?

It is tightly focused and directed at people who are considering having their bodies preserved after death. However, if it developed a broader coverage it could help people to stay healthy.

This very unusual publication is the newsletter of Longevity Books, and it consists of six folded and stapled A3 sheets, producing 24 numbered pages. There are colour illustrations and a considerable amount of information provided as resources for readers interested in investigating the major concerns of Longevity Books. The subject central to this publication is cryonics — that is, the preservation of the human body after death in a state that virtually prevents decay. This is achieved through suspending the lifeless body almost instantly at temperatures that fully inhibit its deterioration. The ultimate aim of this treatment is to enable its participants to be re-animated by future generations who, it is presumed, will have an interest in doing so.

Certainly the issues at stake here are presented sympathetically and emphatically. Yet it is difficult to be certain who the intended audience is. The prose style throughout is often circumlocutory, and there is a considerable amount of jargon; while the organization of the newsletter seems random and accumulative. There is a considerable amount of not-altogether scientifically-derived material deployed alongside data gleaned from disinterested sources. For these reasons, the impetus of the whole newsletter looks to be directed towards those people for whom the subject has already taken root, but who feel the need to be better informed, or even persuaded to affirm their latent convictions.

For these people there are certainly examples of balanced and well-judged writing here. Page 16 provides a first-person explanation of the subject and its meta/physical ramifications by a medical doctor who is an enthusiastic supporter; while pages 17-23 are styled as a question-and-answer session between a highly-qualified expositor on the subject and a very skeptical interlocutor. But while this is the most intriguing section of the whole piece and, from an editorial point of view, the most daring, I couldn't help but feel that some of the 'answers' provided dodged the thrust of the question a little too noticeably.

Still, this is a subject that deserves to be debated more widely by the societies concerned, and the scope of its advocacy here is a very good starting point. As biased as it is — and that is not a criticism — I found it provoked questions on a topic that will become of increasing interest as time goes by. For example, what is the environmental impact of cryonics? Also, the easy assumption of the justice of laissez-faire capitalism that makes this process available to only a tiny fraction of the population, while denying it to the huge majority who are obliged to contribute to its maintenance and future success, is something that must be questioned.

All of these issues will be with us for a long time, and the sooner we acquaint ourselves with the facts and fictions as they are described here, the better able we will be to make the informed decisions that will be demanded of us.

Longevity Report is a magazine focusing on cyronics and the issues related to the topic.

Issue #96 includes a section concerning the problems surrounding cryonic endeavours, such as, employee instability and financial costs. There is also an article discussing the effect cryonics might have on the size of the population. These are interesting to read about, but the information seems to be based more on opinion than fact.

There is a review of NANOMEDICINE, VOL. IIA: BIOCOMPATIBILITY, a book written by Robert A. Freitas. We are given a general overview and a breakdown of some of the chapters. As someone new to the topic, this structure made it easier to understand. I felt as if I had not only learnt about the book, but also something about nanomedicine.

As a regular feature, there is a 9-page section devoted to reporting results from the FLY LONGEVITY EXPERIMENTS. This is an on-going study observing the lifespan of fruit-flies when exposed to things such as, fruit juice. The presentation of the results looks overwhelming on the page, but the use of visual aids does ease this problem slightly.

In conclusion, I would say this newsletter was interesting to read. It asks important questions and although the answers are biased, it does highlight problems rather than choosing to ignore them.