CryoNet #32321 - #32323

CryoNet - Tue 19 Jan 2010

    #32321: Re: Stressing rejuvenation to promote cryonics [David Stodolsky]
    #32322: New Yorker profile of Robert Ettinger [Mark Plus]
    #32323: Vitrification is essential for anhydrobiosis [oberon]

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Message #32321
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Stressing rejuvenation to promote cryonics
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:23:23 +0100
References: <[email protected]>

On 18 Jan 2010, at 11:00 AM, Michael Smith wrote:

>> Given that cryonics idea has circulated in the culture for almost  
>> 50 years, and that people can now easily read about it online, I'd  
>> like to know why such misunderstandings about it persist.
>>
>> Mark Plus
>
>
> At a guess, I would suggest that it's because people are scared of
> looking socially deviant.  I think we're all familiar with the
> standard litany of illogical arguments against both cryonics and the
> whole idea of immortality.  The fact that the same arguments appear in
> people who don't collaborate and often clearly haven't put much
> thought into the issue suggests that the primary resistance to
> cryonics is cultural.  The arguments, I would wager, are completely
> secondary to the primary drive to belong to and be accepted by a
> community.

Right. This is why I have argued that recruitment of large groups of  
people simultaneously is the way to increase growth. They can form  
their own subculture and thereby resist pressures to conform from the  
mainstream culture.


> There are a few memes in particular that I think compound the problem.
> The two that I think are the most difficult to overcome are (1) the
> idea that aging is an integral and therefore inevitable part of life
> and (2) the idea that everyone has a proper time to die.  Since being
> part of a culture is to a large extent a matter of adopting the memes
> of that culture, we immortalists can often appear as though we're not
> part of the same "tribe," so to speak, as those whom we would like to
> persuade.  I suspect it has absolutely nothing to do with the logic of
> life and death and has everything to do with the sense of belonging.

This view is supported by my reanalysis of the Badger data.


>
>  I and a few others who attended the Teens &
> Twenties conference in Florida this last weekend are planning on
> performing a study to explore this and other hypotheses (e.g. that
> people with an inclination towards cryonics have a fundamentally
> different psychological constitution than the general populous).

I don't see how this follows from the argument that the cultural  
framework is the primary determinant of acceptance of cryonics.

>
>
> What this would tell us is WHY people appear unreasonable by pointing
> us to their actual motivations for rejecting cryonics and other
> immortalist endeavors.  Once we know that, we can change our tactics
> in presenting cryonics so that our presentations come across as more
> compelling, meaning that we can really make progress in saving lives.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to work, since it has already been  
concluded that it isn't the logic that is crucial for making these  
types of choices.


dss


David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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Message #32322
From: Mark Plus <[email protected]>
Subject: New Yorker profile of Robert Ettinger
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:53:48 -0800

And a rather snarky one, I might add. I've uploaded a scan:

"The Iceman," by Jill Lepore

http://www.box.net/shared/static/tniix6ba09.pdf

Author's information:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~amciv/faculty/lepore.shtml

Mark Plus




 		 	   		  
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Message #32323
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:33:40 -0800 (PST)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Vitrification is essential for anhydrobiosis

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Apr 1;105(13):5093-8. Epub 2008 Mar 24.
Vitrification is essential for anhydrobiosis in an African chironomid, Polypedilum vanderplanki.
Sakurai M, Furuki T, Akao K, Tanaka D, Nakahara Y, Kikawada T, Watanabe M, Okuda T. Center for Biological Resources and Informatics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, B-62 Nagatsuta-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8501, Japan.
    Anhydrobiosis is an extremely dehydrated state in which organisms show no detectable metabolism but retain the ability to revive after rehydration. Thus far, two hypotheses have been proposed to explain how cells are protected during dehydration: (i) water replacement by compatible solutes and (ii) vitrification. The present study provides direct physiological and physicochemical evidence for these hypotheses in an African chironomid, Polypedilum vanderplanki, which is the largest multicellular animal capable of anhydrobiosis. Differential scanning calorimetry measurements and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) analyses indicated that the anhydrobiotic larvae were in a glassy state up to as high as 65 degrees C. Changing from the glassy to the rubbery state by either heating or allowing
  slight moisture uptake greatly decreased the survival rate of dehydrated larvae. In addition, FTIR spectra showed that sugars formed hydrogen bonds with phospholipids and that membranes remained in the liquid-crystalline state in the anhydrobiotic larvae. These results indicate that larvae of P. vanderplanki survive extreme dehydration by replacing the normal intracellular medium with a biological glass. When entering anhydrobiosis, P. vanderplanki accumulated nonreducing disaccharide trehalose that was uniformly distributed throughout the dehydrated body by FTIR microscopic mapping image. Therefore, we assume that trehalose plays important roles in water replacement and intracellular glass formation, although other compounds are surely involved in these phenomena.
PMID: 18362351

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