I just saw an interesting post from Depressed Metabolism on cryonics in the media:

There has been much debate about how to persuade more people to consider cryonics. Renewed efforts should be made to end misunderstanding about the following three basic points about cryonics:

1. Cryonics is not the freezing of dead people, but involves the attempt to halt decomposition of people that have been given up by contemporary medicine through the use of low temperatures. Legal death is not biological death.

2. The objective of cryonics is to protect critically ill patients against ice formation at cryogenic temperatures by replacing the blood with a cryoprotective agent. Vitrification solutions attempt to inhibit ice formation altogether.

3. Cryonics is not suspended animation and should not be evaluated as such. Expecting people to destroy their brains because suspended animation is not feasible yet is neither prudent nor caring. Our current burial and cremation practices reflect a simplistic view of death and a desire for instant gratification and closure.

I wonder how much money, in total, has been spent on marketing cryonics? If there are any billionaires out there, they might consider donating a few million to Alcor so that it can hire a modern marketing consultancy and launch a decent marketing and information campaign.

Another question is whether cryonics is inherently "yucky", or whether it is merely a matter of historical accident that it is unpopular. Would $1 million spent on marketing cryonics save hundreds of thousands of lives, or would it be money down the drain? It's almost worth buying some lottery tickets just so that in some branch of the wavefunction I get to find out.

(For a description of cryonics, see wikipedia on cryonics: Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine until resuscitation may be possible in the future. See also Robin Hanson on cryonics)